We have used Galleria mellonella (Linnaeus, 1758) larvae as a bait for detecting insect pathogens in soils from Alicante(SE Spain). Soil from 61 sites was collected including agricultural fields, forests and a mediterranean shrub(Nerium oleander L.) growing under natural or garden environments. The most frequently insect pathogens found werefungi (32.8% soils), being Beauveria bassiana (Bals.) Vuill (21% soils) the species most abundant. Metarhiziumanisopliae (Metschn.) Sorok (6.4%) and Lecanicillium lecanii (Zimm.) Gams [= Verticillium lecanii Zimm.] (4.8%)were less frequent. B. bassiana also scored the highest infection percentage in a single soil sample (ca. 90% of insectsinfected), and was also the most frequent (77.8%) entomopathogenic fungus detected in soils under N. oleander.
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Asensio et al. (2003) studied this question.