Small Cages with Insect Couples Provide a Simple Method for a Preliminary Assessment of Mating Disruption

Mating disruption by sex pheromones is a sustainable, effective and widely used pest management scheme. A drawback of this technique is its challenging assessment of effectiveness in the field (e.g., spatial scale, pest density). The aim of this work was to facilitate the evaluation of field-deploye...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:TheScientificWorld 2012-01, Vol.2012 (2012), p.1-8
Main Authors: Briand, Françoise, Guerin, Patrick M., Charmillot, Pierre-Joseph, Kehrli, Patrik
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Aquatic insects
Biotechnology - methods
Botrytis cinerea
Butterflies & moths
Cages
Communication
Control
Courtship of animals
Dispensers
Equipment Design
Female
Gelechiidae
Grapes
Insecta
Insecticides
Insects
Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera - metabolism
Lobesia botrana
Male
Mating disruption
Observations
Pest control
Pest Control, Biological - methods
Pests
Pheromones
Sex
Sex Attractants - chemistry
Sexual Behavior, Animal
Switzerland
Testing
Tortricidae
Vineyards
Wineries & vineyards
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Summary:Mating disruption by sex pheromones is a sustainable, effective and widely used pest management scheme. A drawback of this technique is its challenging assessment of effectiveness in the field (e.g., spatial scale, pest density). The aim of this work was to facilitate the evaluation of field-deployed pheromone dispensers. We tested the suitability of small insect field cages for a pre-evaluation of the impact of sex pheromones on mating using the grape moths Eupoecilia ambiguella and Lobesia botrana, two major pests in vineyards. Cages consisted of a cubic metal frame of 35 cm sides, which was covered with a mosquito net of 1500 μm mesh size. Cages were installed in the centre of pheromone-treated and untreated vineyards. In several trials, 1 to 20 couples of grape moths per cage were released for one to three nights. The proportion of mated females was between 15 to 70% lower in pheromone-treated compared to untreated vineyards. Overall, the exposure of eight couples for one night was adequate for comparing different control schemes. Small cages may therefore provide a fast and cheap method to compare the effectiveness of pheromone dispensers under standardised semi-field conditions and may help predict the value of setting-up large-scale field trials.
ISSN:2356-6140
1537-744X
1537-744X
DOI:10.1100/2012/960468