Comparison of Trap Types, Placement, and Colors for Monitoring Anthonomus musculus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) Adults in Highbush Blueberries

Abstract

The cranberry weevil, Anthonomus musculus Say (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), is a key (univoltine) pest of highbush blueberries in the northeast United States. To date, however, no trapping system has been developed to successfully monitor this pest. In 2012–2014, studies were conducted in commercial highbush blueberry farms in New Jersey to 1) evaluate the efficacy of various commercially available traps, designed for other weevil species (e.g., pepper weevil, plum curculio, boll weevil, red palm weevil, and black vine weevil), in capturing A. musculus adults; 2) test whether the relative location of traps within the blueberry canopy affects adult captures and 3) determine the effects of different colored (yellow, white, green, red, blue, brown, and black) sticky traps on weevil captures. For a comparison with existing techniques, we also monitored the number of overwintered adult weevils on blueberry bushes using beat sheet sampling. Of all traps and colors tested, the most A. musculus adults were caught on yellow sticky traps and more adults were captured when these traps were placed at the bottom half of the blueberry canopy, i.e., 0.5–1.0 m above ground. Most weevils were caught on colored traps late in the season (i.e., during bloom), which corresponds mostly to the second (summer) adult generation. Thus, number of overwintered adults caught on traps did not correlate with those on bushes. Although our study identified traps that can be used to capture A. musculus adults, these traps alone (i.e., without semiochemicals) have so far limited applicability for monitoring overwintered adult weevils in highbush blueberries.

Catch me if you can: the influence of refuge / trap design, previous feeding experience, and semiochemical lures on vine weevil (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) monitoring success

“…Further work is required to understand the visual ecology and refuge requirements of vine weevil to optimize monitoring tool design and further increase their efficacy in the field. Silva et al 36 highlight that for monitoring the cranberry weevil trap color influences efficacy and argue that without semiochemicals traps have limited applicability. Without identification of a vine weevil pheromone for use as an attractant, host-plant volatiles are the most promising source to develop an attractant to improve vine weevil trapping.…”

“…Although the vine weevil trap retained the most weevils in this study, in work testing the efficacy of the same trap for monitoring the cranberry weevil, Anthonomus musculus Say (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), it was found to be the least effective of those tested. 36 This difference is likely, however, to be a consequence of the cranberry weevil being able to fly while vine weevil adults are restricted to walking.…”

Fine‐tuning the composition of the cranberry weevil (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) aggregation pheromone

“…The experiments were done in six commercial farms: three in highbush blueberries in New Jersey (one in Burlington County [39°51′20″N, 74°41′12″W] and two in Atlantic County [39°32′00″N, 74°41′12″W]) and three in cranberries in Massachusetts (Plymouth County [41°54′43″N, 70°43′00″W]). Yellow sticky cards (23 × 28 cm Pherocon AM No‐Bait; Trécé Inc.) (Silva et al, 2018) were baited with one of six treatments. We used a double‐split plot design with plot nested within site (farm) nested within crop, with three (blueberry) or four (cranberry) replications (plots) at each of the six farms ( N = 21 plots).…”

“…Szendrei et al (2011) caught A. musculus adults on yellow sticky cards baited with the A. eugenii pheromone in highbush blueberry fields in New Jersey. Yellow sticky cards captured more A. musculus adults than any other traps designed for weevils (Silva, Salamanca, Kyryczenko‐Roth, Alborn, & Rodriguez‐Saona, 2018).…”

High innate preference for black substrate in the chive gnat,Bradysia odoriphaga(Diptera: Sciaridae)

“…Many insects have already been confirmed to exhibit colour preferences including those for distinct colour hues, colour saturation, colour brightness, and colour contrast (Lunau and Maier, 1995; Chittka and Menzel, 1992; but see Kelber, 2005). Most profound studies about innate colour preferences in insects focus on pollinating insects such as bees (Lunau et al, 1996; Hempel de Ibarra et al, 2000; Koethe et al, 2018), lepidopterans (Weiss, 1997; Goyret et al, 2008), and flies (Ilse, 1949; An et al 2018; Lunau et al, 2018), whereas studies about colour preferences in agricultural pests mostly evaluate the results of colour trapping (Bian et al, 2016; Silva et al, 2018). Colour trapping is a common method for the control of dipteran pest species.…”