In an effort to address pesticide issues, researchers at Penn State have embarked on a quest for a solution. They sought to harness the benefits of ladybugs by turning to an unconventional practitioner to protect crops. Led by Sara Hermann from the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State, the team has developed a new pest management tool by leveraging the chemical ecology of predator-prey interactions between ladybugs and aphids. Various studies have examined the behaviors developed by aphids that detect the scent of ladybugs in order to avoid becoming prey. In her recent paper, Hermann found that the presence of ladybug scents also reduces the feeding duration of aphids and decreases their population numbers by 25%.