An Improvement of the Holling Type Iii Functional Response in Entomophagous Species Model

In this study, we analyze the functional response for a parasitoid-host and a predator-prey system, as a tool of biological control of pests to evaluate the potential of bio-control agents. A possible biological interpretation was given to the adjustment coefficients of type I and II functional response by Hassell.1Based on this, we propose new expressions for type III in terms of a new parameter that we call entomophagous potential (parasitoid or predator), providing examples using actual data from trials carried out previously for parasitoid species Chelonus blackburni Cameron (Hym.: Braconidae) and predator species Joppeicus paradoxus Puton (Het.: Joppeicidae). The novelty of the paper consists in the fact that these new expressions for Holling type III functional response have a biological interpretation, and result in a better fit to data than Hassel's model.