Precise and Low-Cost Monitoring of Plum Curculio (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) Pest Activity in Pyramid Traps With Cameras

Abstract

Incorporating camera systems into insect traps potentially benefits insect phenology modeling, nonlethal insect monitoring, and research into the automated identification of traps counts. Cameras originally for monitoring mammals were instead adapted to monitor the entrance to pyramid traps designed to capture the plum curculio, Conotrachelus nenuphar (Herbst) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae). Using released curculios, two new trap designs (v.I and v.II) were field-tested alongside conventional pyramid traps at one site in autumn 2010 and at four sites in autumn 2012. The traps were evaluated on the basis of battery power, ease-of-maintenance, adaptability, required-user-skills, cost (including labor), and accuracy-of-results. The v.II design fully surpassed expectations, except that some trapped curculios were not photographed. In 2012, 13 of the 24 traps recorded every curculio entering the traps during the 18-d study period, and in traps where some curculios were not photographed, over 90% of the omissions could be explained by component failure or external interference with the motion sensor. Significantly more curculios entered the camera traps between 1800 and 0000 hours. When compared with conventional pyramid traps, the v.I traps collected a similar number of curculios. Two observed but not significant trends were that the v.I traps collected twice as many plum curculios as the v.II traps, while at the same time the v.II traps collected more than twice as many photos per plum curculio as the v.I traps. The research demonstrates that low-cost, precise monitoring of field insect populations is feasible without requiring extensive technical expertise.

EDAPHOLOG monitoring system: automatic, real‐time detection of soil microarthropods

“…). To reduce power consumption required for image analysis, Selby, Gage & Whalon () combined a CCD camera with an IR sensor to study a weevil (plum curculio, Conotrachelus nenuphar ). While their system required less power, it failed to photograph every insect detected by the IR sensor.…”

“…Efforts to detect insects in the field have been successful for arthropods larger than a centimetre mostly on pests (Arbogast et al 2000;Jiang et al 2008;Shieh et al 2011). To reduce power consumption required for image analysis, Selby, Gage & Whalon (2014) combined a CCD camera with an IR sensor to study a weevil (plum curculio, Conotrachelus nenuphar).…”

Web‐based automatic traps for early detection of alien wood‐boring beetles

“…In recent decades, remote cameras have been used mainly in plant studies (Ahrends et al., ; Graham et al., ; Migliavacca et al., ) and wildlife monitoring (Burton et al., ). Nevertheless, a few recent studies have focused on the possible use of cameras for detecting and monitoring insect occurrence and activity (Jian et al., ; Guarnieri et al., ; Lopez et al., ; Selby et al., ; Azfar et al., ). Tools that can check insect traps remotely and automatically—an activity that is usually very expensive and time‐consuming if performed manually—could be useful, for instance, for the early detection of invasive alien species at high‐risk sites.…”

Kairomone and Camera Trapping New Zealand Flower Thrips, Thrips obscuratus

“…There is a risk of inconsistency between observers during insect counting and trap deployment, and significant time lags between counting and reporting. Remote devices including cameras for obtaining high quality images at set time intervals are increasingly used across different fields, including in vertebrate biology [ 4 ] and entomology, where automated insect identification has also been examined [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. Remotely provided images avoid the need for people to go into the field to check traps, saving both time and travel costs.…”

“…However, testing of prototype systems is needed to clarify how the technology could actually deliver benefits. Pests targeted with such systems based on lures include moths [ 10 , 11 ] with efforts commencing for other pests, such as weevils [ 7 ]. The potential uses clearly exist wherever lures and traps are used [ 12 ], although generic lures create additional challenges for species identification.…”