Studies on sex pheromone of Blitopertha orientalis
Responses of Blitopertha (Anomala) orientalis (EPPO A1 quarantine pest) to a synthetic female sex pheromone have been studied in Connecticut (US), in the field and in a sustained-flight tunnel. Both field and flight-tunnel studies have shown that the synthetic sex pheromone was effective. In the field study, which was done on three golf course fairways known to be infested by B. orientalis, it was found that in a two week period more than 150,000 beetles were captured by traps containing the pheromone. Contrary to previous studies showing that B. orientalis is most active during the warm and sunny periods of the day and that most flight occur between 08.00 to 16.00 h, results suggested that they are crepuscular insects as highest catches were obtained around sunset. The authors felt that this synthetic pheromone is very potent, as a small dosage (100 µg) caught an average of 1,000 beetles per trap per day. They concluded that this compound could be a very useful tool for beetle monitoring and trapping, especially because adults are difficult to see during the day and populations may be left undetected until serious damage to turfgrasses is already done.
Sources
Facundo, H.T.; Zhang, A.; Robbins, P.S.; Alm, S.R.; Linn, C.E.; Villani, M.G.; Roelofs, W.L. (1994) Sex pheromone responses of the oriental beetle (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae).
Environmental Entomology, 23 (6), 1508-1515.