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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Parlier, California » San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center » Commodity Protection and Quality Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #379786
Research Project: Systems-Based Approaches for Control of Arthropod Pests Important to Agricultural Production, Trade and Quarantine

Location: Commodity Protection and Quality Research

Title: Changes in shape, texture and airflow improve efficiency of monitoring traps for Tribolium castaneum (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

Author
item SAJEEWANI, PANAMULLA A. - Rajarata University Of Sri Lanka
item DISSANAYAKA, D. M. S. - Rajarata University Of Sri Lanka
item WIJAYARATNE, LEANAGE K. - Rajarata University Of Sri Lanka
item Burks, Charles - Chuck

Submitted to: Insects
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/3/2020
Publication Date: 11/10/2020
Citation: Sajeewani, P.H., Dissanayaka, D.K., Wijayaratne, L.W., Burks, C.S. 2020. Changes in shape, texture and airflow improve efficiency of monitoring traps for Tribolium castaneum (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). Insects. 11(11):778. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects11110778.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/insects11110778

Interpretive Summary: Flour beetles are important global pests of stored products, and poor trapping efficiency has made it difficult to use monitoring information to determine the need for treatment and the location of infestations. A series of experimental trap designs was used with and without a small electronics cooling fan to determine the impact of trap design and air flow on trap efficiency. Traps with straight rather than curved sides and with entries closer to the surface level captured flour beetles 2-5 times more efficiently than the dome-shaped trap that currently predominates the commercial market for traps. Addition of forced air when the onboard fans were turned on provided a small additional increase in efficiency and improved the efficiency of a square trap more than triangular traps. These findings demonstrate that changes to trap design can improve monitoring efficiency as much as improvements in attractants, and can provide the basis for improving monitoring and pest management for these important stored product pests.

Technical Abstract: The red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, is an important pest of stored products. We compared an existing standard commercial trap with five experimental trap designs differing from the status quo in shape, surface texture, and in forced air capability provided by fans. We tested the 5 new traps and a commercial trap with T. castaneum adults with the presence/absence of air flow and the availability of either the pheromone only or both the pheromone and kairomone. Without using the fans and baited with pheromone only, these new trap designs capture beetles 3 to 5 times as efficiently as the status quo trap. Use of both pheromone and kairomone doubled the capture efficiency of the status quo trap but did not significantly affect the capture efficiency of the new trap designs, all of which captured significantly more effectively than the status quo trap. Turning on fans for forced ventilation significantly improved trap efficiency of the more effective of the newer traps compared to monitoring with both pheromone and kairomone but no fan. This study provides new insights into factors affecting trap efficiency for monitoring of T. castaneum in grain storage facilities, and suggests ways in which existing traps might be improved.