Author
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Thorpe, Kevin |
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Submitted to: Annual Gypsy Moth Review Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings Publication Acceptance Date: 10/25/2004 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: Mating disruption is an environment friendly pest management tactic that has proven to be highly effective against the gypsy moth, the most serious defoliator of eastern hardwood forests. This pest control method only affects the gypsy moth and therefore has no unintended impacts on the environment. The federal Slow the Spread of the Gypsy Moth (STS) program, which seeks to reduce the rate at which the pest is moving into new areas, treated more than 510,000 acres with mating disruption in 2004. While the formulation currently being used in STS is effective, the development of new formulations should lead to improvements in efficacy and reductions in cost. During 2004, experiments were conducted in Virginia to test a new gypsy moth mating disruption formulation developed by 3M Canada that can be aerially applied using standard commercial equipment. When applied at 15 g active ingredient per acre, the new formulation reduced male moth capture in treated plots by more than 90%, indicating that it was effective at this dose. Additional experiments were conducted to see if mating disruption treatments can prevent gypsy moths that are already in close contact with each other from mating and to test the effectiveness of mating disruption treatments in open areas with few trees. The results of these experiments will help researchers develop more effective gypsy moth mating disruption formulations and strategies, and will further assist government agencies and gypsy moth control specialists develop and operate more effective gypsy moth management programs. Technical Abstract: A cooperative USDA (ARS, Forest Service, APHIS) and Virginia Tech gypsy moth mating disruption field research project was conducted in 2004 in the Cumberland and Appomattox-Buckingham State Forests in central Virginia and the Goshen Wildlife Management Area in Goshen, Virginia to evaluate the effectiveness of new mating disruption formulations, to investigate the effects of moth density on the effectiveness of mating disruption treatments, and to determine the effects of mating disruption treatments on mating success in non-wooded areas, such as might occur in gypsy moth eradication efforts. When aerially applied at 15 g active ingredient per acre, a new sprayable formulation developed by 3M Canada reduced male moth capture in treated plots by more than 90%, indicating that it was effective at that dose. Trap catch was not sufficiently reduced when the product was applied at 6 g/acre. Trap catch was reduced 97.5% in plots treated with the Hercon Disrupt II plastic laminated flake formulation at 6 g/acre compared to untreated controls, and was reduced 99.4% at 15 g/acre, regardless of whether male moths were released in the vicinity of the traps at low (50 moths/release) or high (150 moths/release) densities. |
