Responses of Red Flour Beetle Adults, Tribolium castaneum (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), and Other Stored Product Beetles to Different Pheromone Trap Designs

Simple Summary

Traps are used to monitor insect pests in stored food product habitats, and information on insects trapped can be used for making control decisions in pest control programs. A special trap is used for adults of the red flour beetle, one of the most serious pests of flourmills worldwide. The red flour beetle trap is a “pitfall” design wherein a walking beetle orients to the trap, it climbs up the inclined side of the trap to the top of a cup, it then slips or walks over the edge of the cup. The beetle falls into the bottom of the cup, where it is retained and killed inside the food oil placed in the bottom of the cup. However, dusty environments can result in the pitfall trap operating poorly and not capturing beetles at an optimum level. This research showed that a dust cover can be applied to the top of a baited pitfall trap and significantly improve capture of beetles in dusty environments of a flourmill. The dust cover was incorporated into the commercial pitfall trap product and now is known as the Dome trap, which is widely used for pest management of flour beetles and other stored product insects throughout the grain and food industries in many countries.

Abstract

A series of laboratory and field experiments were performed to assess the responses of Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) and other stored-product beetles to pheromone-baited traps and trap components. A commercial Tribolium pitfall trap called the Flit-Trak M², the predecessor to the Dome trap, was superior in both laboratory and field experiments over the other floor trap designs assessed at capturing walking T. castaneum. In field experiments, Typhaea stercorea (L.) and Ahasverus advena (Stephens) both preferred a sticky trap to the pitfall trap. Although the covered trap is effective at capturing several other species of stored product beetles, the synthetic Tribolium aggregation pheromone lure is critical for the pitfall trap’s efficacy for T. castaneum. Although the food-based trapping oil used in the pitfall trap was not found to be attractive to T. castaneum when assayed alone, it had value as an enhancer of the pheromone bait when the two were used together in the trap. A dust cover modification made to go over the pitfall trap was effective in protecting the trap from dust, although the trap was still vulnerable to dust contamination from sanitation techniques that used compressed air to blow down the mill floors. Capture of T. castaneum in the modified trap performed as well as the standard trap design in a non-dusty area of a flour mill, and was significantly superior over the standard trap in a dusty area. T. castaneum responded in flight outside a flourmill preferentially to multiple funnel traps with pheromone lures compared to traps without pheromone.

Examination of a miniaturized funnel trap for Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae) larval sampling

Funnel traps are often used to sample for the presence of Aedes aegypti (L.) (Diptera: Culicidae) larvae in subterranean aquatic habitats. These traps are generally > or = 15 cm in diameter, making them impractical for use in subterranean sites that have narrow (10-cm) access ports, such as those in standard-sized septic tanks. Recent research indicates septic tanks may be important habitats for Ae. aegypti in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. To sample mosquito larval populations in these sites, a miniaturized funnel trap was necessary. This project describes the use of a smaller funnel trap for sampling larval populations. The effects of larval instar (third and fourth) and population density on trap efficacy also are examined. The trap detected larval presence 83% of the time at a larval density of 0.011 larvae per cm(2) and 100% of the time at densities > or = 0.022 larvae per cm(2). There was a significant trend of increasing percentage of recaptured larvae with higher larval population densities. Although the miniaturized funnel trap is less sensitive at detecting larval presence in low population densities, it may be useful for sampling aquatic environments with restricted access or shallow water, particularly in domestic septic tanks.