Hunting billbugs have recently emerged as a widespread pest of warm‐season turfgrasses. Traditional management strategies developed for other billbug species, such as the bluegrass billbug, in cool‐season turfgrass are not effective against hunting billbugs in warm‐season turfgrass. Limited field trials in warm‐season turfgrass for hunting billbug control found little to no differences among insecticides used, primarily due to insufficient billbug numbers collected. Therefore, a technique was developed using plastic containers filled with turfgrass to determine the efficacy of several insecticides on adult and larval hunting billbugs. This technique allowed for >90% of the adults and >85% of the larvae released into respective containers to be recaptured after 7 days. Products containing bifenthrin, clothianidin, cyantraniliprole, or the combination of bifenthrin + clothianidin produced 89.5, 83.3, 82.2, and 85.4% mortality in adult billbugs, respectively. Overall percent control of the larval stage was too low to develop control recommendations, where imidacloprid produced the highest mortality at 33.6%. Turfgrass managers should implement a monitoring plan to identify periods of peak adult hunting billbug activity and schedule insecticide applications during these times.
The hunting billbug, Sphenophorus venatus vestitus Chittenden, is one of the most widely recognized billbug turfgrass pests. Since 2000, damage to warm-season turfgrass caused by hunting bill bugs has increased and a need for information on hunting billbug biology is necessary for the development of management plans. Field and laboratory studies were conducted to collect data on overwintering, oviposition behavior, larval survival at various levels of soil moisture, and adult damage. Turfgrass samples from ‘Tifway 419’ bermudagrass(Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers x Cynodon transvaalensis Burtt Davy) on golf courses were collected to determine overwintering behavior, and 10 female adult billbugs were collected weekly to determine oviposition behavior.Survival of medium-sized larvae (head capsule width: 1.0 and 1.7 mm) was evaluated in containers with 20, 40,60, or 80% of the total pore space occupied by water. Zero, two, four, or six adult billbugs were placed in bermudagrass, zoysiagrass, or tall fescue containers and images were collected for 4 weeks to determine adult damage. We observed that hunting billbugs overwinter as adults and all larval sizes. Adults became active in March and began to oviposit, which continued through October. Larval mortality was lowest with 20% of the total pores pace occupied by water, while increases in moisture caused significant mortality. Adults caused a greater reduction in warm-season turfgrass cover than cool-season turfgrass cover. This research builds on the existing biological information for the hunting billbug biology in transition zones and will be pivotal in developing practical and sustainable management plans.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.