Water, a powerful attractant for the gravid females of Plodia interpunctella and Cadra cautella

Water revisited: a powerful attractant for certain stored‐product moths

“…Mass trapping has had limited success (Phillips, 1997;Trematerra, 1997) in reducing pest insect damage in stored products. Chow et al (1977) trapped large numbers of female and male pyralid moths with water traps. In order to de facto reduce populations, traps that catch females are needed.…”

“…Identification of minor components emitted by female moths that are attractive and can be released in effective amounts from the traps may increase the efficacy of traps but may still not result in population reduction, due the high mating ability of the remaining males. The interesting and overlooked results of Chow et al (1977) raises the question whether water alone attracts pyralid males and females. Investigations of pheromones combined with food odours as attractants for males and ovipositing females have met with limited success (Chambers, 1990;Phillips, 1997;Liang et al, 1998).…”

Assessment of the Influence of Artificial Dietary Supplements on Aspects of Biology of Adult Cocoa Moth, Ephestia Cautella

“…Whereas, access to drinking water after mating and during adulthood in cocoa moth increased longevity in males and females and also resulted in the total number of fertilized eggs [3]. Water sources are attractive to free-flying adult males and females of E. cautella [7,8,5 ]. Stored-product moths and beetles are often used as model species in laboratories for life-history and matingstrategy studies in insects [9,10,11].…”

“…These insects are cosmopolitan, are able to inhabit indoor facilities and are adapted to live on abundant food commodities with either good or poor quality [4,12]. The cocoa moth's natural food media (cocoa beans, dried fruits, nuts, grains etc) require low moisture content for proper storability; adults should therefore be highly dependent on water for reproductive investments such as gonads development and gamete production, in connection to adult moth's attractiveness to water [7,8]. This study predicted that the longevity of adults will be greatly influenced by one-time access to water prior to mating, which will positively affect the intrinsic fecundity rate and eventual larvae emergence (percentage hatchability) of E. cautella.…”

Attract-and-Kill and Other Pheromone-Based Methods to Suppress Populations of the Indianmeal Moth (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae)

“…Mass-trapping is a method based on the catching and killing of as many males as possible and thus to reduce the proportion of mated females, and ultimately the pest population level, in storage habitats (Chow et al 1977, Levinson and Buchelos 1981, Muller and Pierce 1992, Trematerra 1994. Mating disruption is used by releasing high levels of synthetic pheromone so that the male moth is not capable of Þnding the female, either from "false trail-following" of males to synthetic pheromone dispensers, or some neural disruption in male behavior (Cardé and Minks 1995).…”