Leds and semiochemicals vs. sex pheromones: tests of the european corn borer attractivity in the Krasnodar territory

Abstract

In two geographical points of the Krasnodar Territory, viz. vil. Botanika, Gulkevichi District (eastern subzone of the Central natural-economic zone of the Krasnodar Territory) and st. Kurchanskaya, Temryuk District (Anapo-Taman natural-economic zone) on industrial plantations of maize, Delta sticky traps supplied with various baits were tested for attractiveness for adults of the European corn borer (ECB), Ostrinia nubilalis Hbn. In contrast to sex pheromones, traps with ‘bisex lure’ (semiochemicals phenylacetaldehyde and 4-methoxy-2-phenethyl alcohol) or LEDs captured a considerable number of females, whose prognostic value was significantly higher than that of males. On maize fields near Botanika traps with ‘bisex lure’ caught moths almost at 20- and traps with LEDs more than 70-fold higher rate as compared to sex pheromones. On maize plantations near Kurchanskaya, where both the saturation of crop rotations with maize fields and the pest population is significantly lower, semiochemicals caught ECB moths at the same rate as sex pheromones, in contrast to LEDs, which attracted insects by an order of magnitude more frequently. The results of the tests indicate that the use of LED traps for monitoring of ECB is promising under the modern economic situation of expanding the territories intended for the production of corn grain.

To attract a moth: Wind tunnel and field testing of plant odor and light stimuli and their combination for Ostrinia nubilalis

“…Installation of the light traps inside dense, tall vegetation (maize plants) prevent propagation of light and attracted insects only from a short distance, i. e. the inhabitants of the corn field. This approach allows to minimize the non-target insects (Frolov et al, 2020). In present data the responses to green light in the wind tunnel were higher than control, but since there was no difference between male (38%) and female (40%) responses to this stimulus, green light cannot be considered as oviposition attractant for ECB.…”

“…Bucket funnel traps (Epsky et al, 2008) used in the study were modified by installing a lightemitting unit as it was described by the patent RU201632U1 "Light pheromone trap for flying insects". Description of the trap design, its setup and manual for use were published earlier (Frolov et al, 2020). Traps were placed at the level of 2/3 of plant height, as a rule, at the height of the cob attachment and were arranged as follows: 8-10 m in a row, 50 m between rows and were positioned in 30 m from the edge deep into the cornfield.…”

Asian corn borer (Ostrinia furnacalis Gn., Lepidoptera: Crambidae): Attraction to a bisexual lure and comparison of performance with synthetic sex pheromone

“…Although synthetic pheromone lures are widely used for ECB monitoring (Pélozuelo and Frérot, 2007), including in Europe (Kárpáti et al, 2016), there are indications that they can sometimes show unreliable trapping activity (Szőcs and Babendreier, 2011). In field tests in Europe, the bisexual lure clearly surpassed the activity of synthetic ECB pheromones (both Z and E pheromonal strains) (Tóth et al, 2017;Frolov et al, 2020aFrolov et al, , 2020b. In the present study trapping data suggest that the bisexual lure may work better for catching ACB than the synthetic pheromone lure, making the case similar to that observed for ECB in Europe, however, due to the relatively low numbers captured this finding needs more detailed studies to be conducted in the future.…”

“…4A and 5A). The inferior performance of pheromone traps in the field can be explained not only by the concurrent attraction of virgin males by calling females (Unnithan and Saxena, 1991;Kondo et al, 1993;Evenden et al, 2015;Frolov et al, 2020aFrolov et al, , 2020b but also by the fact that male moths temporarily loose or decrease the sensitivity to sex pheromones after mating (Gadenne et al, 2001;Fischer and King, 2008;Barrozo et al, 2011).…”