Sticky trap monitoring of a pest–predator system in glasshouse tomato crops: are available trap colours sufficient?

Abstract

Monitoring of pest presence and population development in the crop during the season is essential for integrated pest management. Although many tools, for instance coloured sticky traps, have been developed, the full advantage of available information is rarely taken into account in decision‐making. The reasons behind include high workload in practice but also the poorly studied relationships between trap catches and populations in the crop. Here, we investigate whether commercially available coloured sticky traps can be used as tool to monitor population densities of a pest–predator system in glasshouse tomato. The response of Macrolophus pygmaeus (Rambur) (Hemiptera, Miridae) to blue and yellow sticky traps was tested in laboratory and glasshouse experiments. The results indicate that M. pygmaeus can be monitored equally well with both trap colours. The number of trapped insects showed good correlation with the population densities on the crop. Under growing conditions, more M. pygmaeus were trapped on blue compared with yellow sticky traps. However, due to the known preference of Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Westwood) (Hemiptera, Aleyrodidae), yellow traps should be used for a combined pest–predator monitoring.

Monitoring and Biosurveillance Tools for the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, Halyomorpha halys (Stål) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae)

“…Target specificity is an important consideration in trap development as well, as this minimizes labor and time required to sort through the traps and recover the target organism, and to help conserve beneficial nontarget species. Yellow sticky cards are commonly used to monitor presence and abundance of phytophagous insect pests and their respective natural enemies [ 36 , 37 ] due to its super-normal visual stimulus [ 25 ]. In our study, the effectiveness of the yellow sticky cards and clear sticky cards were comparable in capturing H. halys nymphs and adults, but yellow sticky cards attracted and retained more nontarget organisms than clear sticky cards.…”

Wavelength-Specific Behavior of the Western Flower Thrips (Frankliniella occidentalis): Evidence for a Blue-Green Chromatic Mechanism

“…The importance of color cues for insect orientation has led to various applications in plant protection, since they allow the attraction without the involvement of any olfactory plant stimuli. For example, blue and yellow color traps are nowadays the most common method to detect a first infestation of thrips and whiteflies and to monitor the population development in vegetable and ornamental greenhouse crops [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. The commercially available traps usually consist of a rectangular yellow or blue plate which is covered on both sides with a sticky glue so that the insects adhere to them [ 5 , 6 ].…”

Rapid and low-cost insect detection for analysing species trapped on yellow sticky traps

“…The shortcoming of every IPM system is, in addition to acceptance by the grower, precise and cost-effective pest monitoring. In the case of arthropod pests, the difficulty in fulfilling is mainly the tremendous time effort to estimate populations in the crop and/or the lack of expert knowledge to distinguish relevant species 1 , 2 . In contrast to many other pathogens, for arthropods, not only the presence but also the population density is relevant in decision-making, which creates two major tasks for automated monitoring: precise localization and accurate determination of pest organisms in different cropping systems.…”

“…In central Europe, TRIAVA is the most relevant species and is usually controlled by the predator Macrolophus pygmaeus (MACRPY), by the larval parasitoid Encarsia formosa (ENCAFO), or by a combination of both. Several research studies have shown that whiteflies along with their natural predators can be monitored with YSTs 2 , 4 , 7 , 8 .…”