Insect Pest Monitoring from Simple to Smart Traps

University of Nebraska – Lincoln Author

08/31/2020 Added

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Dr. Julie Peterson & Dr. Jeff Bradshaw This talk covers the typical pest collection tools such as sticky traps, light traps and the latest smart technology traps.
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[00:00:09.692]Hi, I'm Julie Peterson,
[00:00:12.000]I'm an extension specialist and associate professor
[00:00:14.870]in entomology here at the West Central Research
[00:00:17.180]and Extension Center in North Platte.
[00:00:19.490]I'm gonna be joined by Jeff Bradshaw,
[00:00:21.385]who is in the same position,
[00:00:23.605]but out of the Panhandle Research and Extension Center
[00:00:26.700]in Scottsbluff, and we're going to share with you all
[00:00:29.350]some information about insect pest monitoring techniques
[00:00:32.529]going from simple to smart traps.
[00:00:38.350]Well, first of all, pest monitoring is really critical
[00:00:40.693]for an integrated pest management program.
[00:00:44.512]Pest monitoring allows you to predict when and where insects
[00:00:49.150]and other pests will be present.
[00:00:51.370]One example of monitoring would be using
[00:00:53.810]this yellow sticky card to sample
[00:00:56.110]Western Corn Root Worm adult beetles,
[00:00:58.110]which is shown in the photo here.
[00:01:01.670]Doing this monitoring also allows you to really focus
[00:01:05.100]and direct your time and energy,
[00:01:07.530]those really limited resources
[00:01:09.339]for scouting more effectively,
[00:01:12.410]or really allowing you to prioritize
[00:01:15.020]and scout those fields that really need it.
[00:01:17.520]We know that we can't be on every acre every day
[00:01:20.490]and see what's happening everywhere.
[00:01:22.270]And so monitoring can really help take some of that time
[00:01:25.270]and effort and automated it a bit.
[00:01:29.213]This also allows you to spend less time and money
[00:01:32.350]and be better informed about pest pressures,
[00:01:35.290]knowing what is out there can really help you
[00:01:38.040]to make better decisions.
[00:01:40.739]We're gonna focus today on monitoring
[00:01:43.040]for the Western Bean Cutworm.
[00:01:45.330]This is the Caterpillar that's pictured here
[00:01:47.330]on an ear of corn.
[00:01:48.870]This is of course a critical insect pest of corn
[00:01:52.210]and for dry beans,
[00:01:55.100]This insect just has one generation per year.
[00:01:58.520]And so for that reason it can be really important
[00:02:01.110]to know when that critical time point in its life cycle
[00:02:05.070]is occurring in the field.
[00:02:07.620]And then also timing as far as making management decisions
[00:02:11.476]is really important so that you know that you are scouting
[00:02:14.819]most effectively at the right time of the year.
[00:02:18.120]And that if you need to,
[00:02:19.620]you are putting your treatment out at the time
[00:02:21.870]that's going to be most effective.
[00:02:25.350]Monitoring of the adults,
[00:02:27.200]which is a moth,
[00:02:29.020]can really inform that timing and it can inform scouting,
[00:02:33.570]but it cannot replace in-field scouting.
[00:02:37.060]So this is really important to think about,
[00:02:39.233]that our moth numbers caught in these monitoring traps
[00:02:42.850]that we'll discuss today will not be able to tell you
[00:02:46.060]exactly how many eggs are being laid in a specific field.
[00:02:50.894]Sometimes you can have a lot of moths caught in a trap
[00:02:53.764]next to a corn field,
[00:02:55.591]but that corn field might not be
[00:02:57.630]at the right preferred growth stage,
[00:03:00.220]and so therefore you don't get a lot of eggs laid there
[00:03:02.930]and you don't actually need to make a treatment there.
[00:03:06.650]Now, scouting is a bit more difficult.
[00:03:09.780]It's harder to get reliable scouting numbers
[00:03:12.370]when you're looking in dry bean production.
[00:03:14.950]So we do rely on moth numbers a little bit more
[00:03:18.368]to inform our management decisions in dry beans,
[00:03:21.978]but still moth numbers on their own are not gonna be enough
[00:03:26.928]to make treatment decisions for corn or for dry beans.
[00:03:32.450]Moth numbers can, however, tell you when and where to scout.
[00:03:37.092]They can really help inform you as to the timing
[00:03:40.540]of when management needs to happen.
[00:03:43.040]For example, we would prefer to do an insecticide treatment
[00:03:47.160]just after the peak of the moth flight.
[00:03:49.900]And so that monitoring for those moth numbers can help you
[00:03:53.930]determine when that peak occurs.
[00:03:58.900]Now, there are a number of different monitoring methods
[00:04:01.380]that you can employ for Western Bean Cutworm.
[00:04:04.167]The first one is sort of a preparation for monitoring.
[00:04:08.530]This is degree-day modeling.
[00:04:10.570]So there actually has been some good research that has come
[00:04:13.600]out of the University of Nebraska
[00:04:15.300]and the University of Minnesota,
[00:04:17.380]where they looked at degree-day accumulations.
[00:04:20.200]They're calculated a little bit differently
[00:04:22.570]than the way we calculate corn growth degree-days,
[00:04:25.700]but yet it's a similar idea.
[00:04:28.030]And we publish every year in Cropwatch a list
[00:04:31.710]of what those degree day models are telling us
[00:04:35.400]as far as how much heat have we accumulated since March 1st,
[00:04:39.983]so that we have a prediction of when 5%, 10%,
[00:04:45.520]25% of the moth flight is going to occur.
[00:04:48.650]Now this can give you a good idea
[00:04:50.440]of when to start monitoring for those moths
[00:04:53.760]and when to start scouting in your fields.
[00:04:56.920]Some of the other methods I'm gonna discuss,
[00:04:58.970]and Jeff will also discuss with you all today,
[00:05:01.860]are first using black light traps.
[00:05:04.680]Next we'll talk about pheromone traps,
[00:05:06.950]both a milk jug type approach,
[00:05:10.210]this is mostly used in dry beans,
[00:05:12.324]also green bucket traps, these are primarily used
[00:05:16.130]to inform about that corn,
[00:05:18.070]but can also be used for dry bean production as well.
[00:05:22.470]And then we'll discuss smart traps a little bit as well.
[00:05:26.020]This is really getting towards that
[00:05:27.714]more complex technology that's allowing you to automate
[00:05:32.854]and not have to do quite so much counting yourself
[00:05:36.120]in order...(voice trails off)
[00:05:37.560]Blacklight traps are one of the oldest approaches
[00:05:39.410]to monitor moths and other night active insects.
[00:05:43.030]This trap design has been used since the first half
[00:05:45.920]of the 1900s and utilizes a black light
[00:05:49.270]or ultraviolet light bulb to attract insects at night.
[00:05:53.570]Nocturnal insects can see UV light
[00:05:56.010]and use it to help them navigate.
[00:05:57.755]Normally, the moon would be the most intense source
[00:06:01.010]of UV light,
[00:06:02.330]but a bright bowl on a trap like this can overpower
[00:06:05.277]their natural navigation and attract in moths.
[00:06:09.660]These moths are then funneled down into the trap
[00:06:12.437]and they'll be killed inside of the catch can
[00:06:15.870]due to the presence of an insecticide strip,
[00:06:18.590]which is this yellow piece hanging here.
[00:06:21.370]There's no pheromone that's used to attract in this trap,
[00:06:24.890]meaning that both the male and the female moths are caught.
[00:06:28.680]There are also a large variety of moth species,
[00:06:31.368]as well as Beatles, Cacewings, Caddisflies
[00:06:34.790]and other insects that are attracted to this trap.
[00:06:38.200]So if you're interested in monitoring
[00:06:39.930]the whole insect community, this is really a good approach,
[00:06:43.201]but if you're only interested in one specific species,
[00:06:47.430]then a pheromone trap may be a better choice.
[00:06:50.470]We collect our blacklight trap almost every day
[00:06:53.210]during the growing season,
[00:06:55.396]and we process it to identify Western Bean Cutworm
[00:06:58.790]as well as 23 other species of field crop
[00:07:02.330]and horticultural pests of interest.
[00:07:05.240]This data is posted online at the
[00:07:07.440]Agra ecosystems entomology website.
[00:07:10.280]And this is part of a system of blacklight traps located
[00:07:13.638]across the state of Nebraska.
[00:07:16.400]This includes locations at Concord, Mead
[00:07:19.680]and Clay Center, and this has been operating
[00:07:22.510]for nearly 35 years.
[00:07:24.920]So we continue to provide this data as an online resource
[00:07:31.240]and hope that you all will use it to help inform
[00:07:33.820]your scouting and your treatment decisions.
[00:07:37.870]Now, to share some information about the other types
[00:07:40.420]of trapping, I'll turn it over to Dr. Jeff Bradshaw.
[00:07:44.150]Hey everybody, I'm Jeff Bradshaw,
[00:07:45.610]I'm an entomologist for the University of Nebraska
[00:07:47.627]at the Panhandle Research and Extension Center.
[00:07:49.990]And I'm going to talk to you today about pheromone traps.
[00:07:52.780]One way the insects communicate is through chemical means,
[00:07:56.010]they use what are called pheromones.
[00:07:57.960]And particularly they communicate with pheromones
[00:07:59.895]when a male is trying to find a female,
[00:08:02.650]and the female, sometimes a moth for example,
[00:08:04.650]will produce a chemical called a pheromone,
[00:08:07.430]sorta like a perfume that the male finds attractive
[00:08:10.120]and it's a way for them to find from some large distance
[00:08:13.350]where to find a mate.
[00:08:14.490]We can produce pheromone in the laboratory,
[00:08:16.120]and there are companies that produce pheromones
[00:08:17.958]through chemical reactions and sell those commercially
[00:08:21.280]for a whole host of different insects.
[00:08:23.250]The way we use those as we put them in a trap,
[00:08:25.407]and that trap sometimes the shape of it
[00:08:27.530]is attractive for the insect as well,
[00:08:29.280]or it works to emit the pheromone in a special way
[00:08:31.950]that's more attractive to the target insect.
[00:08:34.540]We use pheromones to attract the male sex to the trap,
[00:08:38.190]and then we can use those trap count numbers
[00:08:40.470]to give us an estimate of what we're going to,
[00:08:42.700]what we can expect in the field.
[00:08:44.270]There are a number of different styles of pheromone traps.
[00:08:46.817]And one of the things that we're looking at in our program
[00:08:49.590]are different types, different styles of traps
[00:08:51.710]with the pheromone lures inside.
[00:08:53.590]So we're looking right now particularly at
[00:08:55.670]Western Bean Cutworm,
[00:08:56.690]and we have lures that attract the males
[00:08:58.598]and we're looking at milk jug traps,
[00:09:00.950]which is a very inexpensive,
[00:09:03.100]easy to make trap design, literally using a milk jug,
[00:09:06.223]a one gallon milk jug, cutting out the sides,
[00:09:08.800]attaching the pheromone inside,
[00:09:10.430]and then filling up the bottom part,
[00:09:12.170]portion of the trap with usually a mixture
[00:09:14.640]of sometimes antifreeze, sometimes you use soapy water,
[00:09:17.880]depends on the frequency that you're checking the trap
[00:09:19.840]and just how rotten you want those moths to be in that trap.
[00:09:23.310]You go out daily, you empty out the trap,
[00:09:25.500]and then you can sort through the moths,
[00:09:27.210]and if you're keen on identifying these moths,
[00:09:30.277]you can handpick the moths out and count them.
[00:09:32.520]So the milkshake trap, obviously,
[00:09:33.930]is very cheap, there's the cost of the milk jug,
[00:09:36.466]potentially the antifreeze,
[00:09:38.040]and then the pheromone's usually the more expensive
[00:09:39.840]piece of that.
[00:09:41.410]There are some other designs we're looking at,
[00:09:42.940]there's a green bucket trap,
[00:09:44.490]which is often used for things like June Beetles
[00:09:46.640]and some other moths as well,
[00:09:48.460]just to see how well that performs.
[00:09:50.240]It has a different style,
[00:09:51.450]has a different kind of lid on it that keeps rain out,
[00:09:53.950]that's an issue with, particularly with the milk jug trap,
[00:09:56.290]since it's so open to the environment.
[00:09:58.110]And then we have a couple other traps we're looking at,
[00:10:01.020]and one design is called a smart trap.
[00:10:03.660]It's made by a company called DTN
[00:10:06.100]and they have designed machinery that attaches
[00:10:09.810]to the trap that actually records the number of moths
[00:10:12.450]in the trap.
[00:10:13.283]So this is a Delta shape trap,
[00:10:14.620]so a triangular shape trap with the sticky pad
[00:10:17.070]on the bottom, and of course the pheromone inside
[00:10:19.320]and when the moth flies in, it sticks to the sticky pad,
[00:10:21.372]and then there's a camera over the top of it
[00:10:23.630]that takes a picture every 24 hours
[00:10:25.380]and then records that as a data point in the cloud.
[00:10:27.620]So there's a program that counts the moths for you
[00:10:29.720]through some machine learning algorithm that they've used
[00:10:32.510]to help the camera and the software identify
[00:10:35.050]Western Bean Cutworm from all the other moths
[00:10:37.730]that might stick on that sticky pad.
[00:10:39.430]We're looking at these different trap designs
[00:10:40.940]to see how they compare between each other.
[00:10:43.000]So in dry beans,
[00:10:44.640]it's pretty standard to use the milk jug trap,
[00:10:46.880]it's cheap, it's cost effective,
[00:10:49.000]as I mentioned before the lures,
[00:10:50.760]the most expensive component of the trap,
[00:10:52.820]but there's another expense I forgot to mention,
[00:10:54.770]and that is the person hours it takes that physically count
[00:10:57.630]the moths, so sometimes we might have at peak flight
[00:11:00.740]thousands of moths in a milk jug trap.
[00:11:03.240]Somebody has to count those months
[00:11:04.680]and people won't volunteer their time to do that.
[00:11:06.810]This takes time out of the day that a crop scout
[00:11:08.900]could be using for other things, for example.
[00:11:11.520]And of course the cost of their time.
[00:11:13.220]The problem is that that milk jug trap is our standard
[00:11:15.740]of how we monitor for Western Bean Cutworms in dry beans.
[00:11:18.897]And we have these other trap designs where
[00:11:21.534]we know they'll capture moths,
[00:11:23.570]but we don't know how they compare to that standard.
[00:11:25.510]And our thresholds for Western Bean Cutworm risk
[00:11:28.660]in dry beans is related to the number of trap captures
[00:11:32.570]we get in the milk jug trap.
[00:11:34.030]So one of the things that we're doing in this research
[00:11:36.060]in particular that interests us with the smart trap design
[00:11:39.430]is that the trap itself counts the moths.
[00:11:42.150]So that's a time savings,
[00:11:43.700]potentially a significant time saving for the crop scout
[00:11:46.420]and then there's software program they can access
[00:11:49.250]to see those numbers in real time.
[00:11:50.880]So that's what we're doing this year,
[00:11:51.777]and the reason we're comparing these types
[00:11:53.690]is to see what the variability is in trap capture
[00:11:56.560]between just different types of traps,
[00:11:58.540]but then ultimately one goal is to be able
[00:12:00.730]to compare that trap that can count moths on its own,
[00:12:03.484]to the standard milk jug trap
[00:12:05.740]and see how those numbers relate.
[00:12:07.380]And at the end of the study,
[00:12:08.570]because we're doing this on multiple fields,
[00:12:10.650]we should be able to cross relate the numbers we see
[00:12:12.810]in one to the other,
[00:12:13.820]and even if they don't pair up exactly,
[00:12:15.670]we can develop a model,
[00:12:17.100]a formula that we can use to then correct those numbers
[00:12:20.500]from the smart track to look more like the numbers that are
[00:12:22.650]in the milk jug trap.
[00:12:23.560]With Western Bean Cutworms they're prone to lay their eggs
[00:12:25.910]on the underside of a dry bean leaf
[00:12:27.830]and dry beans are really low to the ground,
[00:12:29.820]and it's very difficult to kneel down
[00:12:31.450]and turn over hundreds of driving leaves looking
[00:12:33.520]for the Western Bean Cutworm egg
[00:12:35.010]to scout for those egg masses.
[00:12:37.340]So, we rely on these traps to give us our best guess based
[00:12:40.909]on numbers as to the risks that we're seeing in the field.
[00:12:44.540]Obviously it's an indirect measure
[00:12:46.190]of the risks that we're gonna see in that field.
[00:12:48.380]And we don't see a one to one relationship between
[00:12:50.429]the moths that we capture in the trap
[00:12:53.073]and the ultimate injury that we see in the field,
[00:12:55.554]there's steps that are missing between there,
[00:12:58.100]that we just don't have a good handle on
[00:12:59.900]if you're not actually physically counting the egg masses
[00:13:02.530]in the field.
[00:13:03.363]So, what we say is that we use the traps
[00:13:05.430]as a monitoring tool
[00:13:06.710]to give us a decent idea of the number of moths that we see
[00:13:10.610]in the field.
[00:13:11.443]If we see between 500 and a 1,000 moths in a field,
[00:13:14.470]we say it's a moderate risk.
[00:13:15.888]More than a thousand, we say it's a high risk.
[00:13:18.879]But then we also say you should follow that up with,
[00:13:21.517]you know, as much field scouting as you can
[00:13:24.025]to actually look for evidence of egg laying
[00:13:26.750]and possible larval damage in the field.
[00:13:28.870]So once we have passed the peak moth flight,
[00:13:32.133]we calculate that cumulative number of moths,
[00:13:34.841]and if we reach within or above those thresholds
[00:13:37.890]as mentioned earlier,
[00:13:39.040]then we say an action is probably warranted
[00:13:42.200]usually about two weeks or 10 days following
[00:13:44.980]the peak flight activity.
[00:13:46.360]So for us in the Panhandle,
[00:13:47.880]that's generally around the first or second week of August
[00:13:50.430]is when we can expect then if we need to take an action,
[00:13:53.560]usually an insecticide that's usually around the time
[00:13:56.230]that that would need to be taken.
[00:13:57.490]So that's why we monitor for Western Bean Cutworms,
[00:13:59.740]and that's why we use those strapping systems.
[00:14:03.190]For more information about
[00:14:04.430]Western Bean Cutworm monitoring, scouting and management,
[00:14:08.080]please see our NEB guide from Nebraska Extension
[00:14:11.000]as well as articles published at Cropwatch.
[00:14:13.700]You can also visit the
[00:14:14.730]Western Bean Cutworm Central website, hosted by my lab,
[00:14:18.680]the Agro ecosystems entomology lab
[00:14:21.142]for guidance as to how to make your own milk jug trap.
[00:14:25.420]You can also see our NEB guide and for purchasing
[00:14:28.678]and supplies for doing your green bucket
[00:14:31.530]and other types of pheromone trapping,
[00:14:33.415]we recommend Great Lakes IPM.
[00:14:35.967]You can also find some of these resources from Gimplers
[00:14:39.590]and from other online providers.
[00:14:43.380]Thank you very much,
[00:14:44.780]and Jeff and I look forward to answering any questions
[00:14:47.810]you may have during the Q+A period.

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Insect Pest Monitoring from Simple to Smart Traps

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