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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Kearneysville, West Virginia » Appalachian Fruit Research Laboratory » Innovative Fruit Production, Improvement, and Protection » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #313463
Title: Evaluation of trap designs and deployment strategies for capturing Halyomorpha halys (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae)

Author
item Morrison, William - Rob
item CULLUM, JOHN - Virginia Tech
item Leskey, Tracy

Submitted to: Journal of Economic Entomology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/19/2015
Publication Date: 6/18/2015
Citation: Morrison III, W.R., Cullum, J.P., Leskey, T.C. 2015. Evaluation of trap designs and deployment strategies for capturing Halyomorpha halys (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae). Journal of Economic Entomology. doi: 10.1093/jee/tov159.

Interpretive Summary: The brown marmorated stink bug is an invasive insect pest that attacks numerous fruit and vegetable crops during the summer. In order for growers to better establish whether this stink bug poses a threat to their crops, researchers evaluated various monitoring traps in apple orchards to determine if they provided season-long information regarding the presence, abundance and seasonal activity of this pest. All traps were baited with pheromone lures. Trap types included taller pyramid traps made of wood or coroplast and deployed on the ground between apple trees or smaller pyramid traps deployed on the ground or in the apple tree canopy. Reserachers found pyramid traps of any size deployed on the ground worked very well season-long, as did smaller pyramid traps attached to or hung from horizontal limbs in the tree canopy. Our results suggest growers may be able to use trap designs that are cheaper, lighter and easier to deploy than tall black wooden pyramid traps to monitor the brown marmorated stink bug adults and nymphs.

Technical Abstract: The brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys (Stål) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) is an invasive pest that attacks numerous tree fruit crops season-long. For growers to make informed management decisions against H. halys throughout the growing season, an effective monitoring tool must be in place. Here, we evaluated various trap designs baited with two-component aggregation pheromone of H. halys, the synergist, methyl decatrienoate and a DDVP kill strip that were deployed in commercial apple orchards. We compared our current experimental standard trap, a black plywood pyramid trap 1.22 m in height topped with a clear collection jar deployed on the ground between border row apple trees with other trap designs for two consecutive growing seasons. These included a lighter coroplast pyramid trap of similar dimension and a smaller (0.61 m tall) pyramid trap also deployed on the ground between host trees, a smaller pyramid trap attached to a horizontal tree limb at the base of the pyramid, a smaller pyramid trap hanging from a horizontal branch via a cord, and a semi-pyramid design known as the Rescue trap also hanging by a cord from a horizontal branch. We found that the lighter coroplast pyramid was likely the most sensitive, capturing significantly more adults than all other trap designs including our experimental standard. By contrast, the Rescue trap captured significantly fewer adults than all other trap designs. Smaller pyramid traps performed as well as our experimental standard in terms of adult captures, though, nymphal captures were statistically lower for the pyramid trap that was hung from horizontal limbs. Additionally, correlations between the experimental standard plywood and coroplast pyramid traps were strong, suggesting that standard plywood pyramid traps could be replaced with lighter, cheaper coroplast pyramid traps. Strong correlations with small pyramid traps also suggest that these designs offer promise as well. Our results suggest that growers may be able to adopt alternative trap designs that are cheaper, lighter and easy to deploy to monitor H. halys in orchards without a significant loss in sensitivity.