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Phony Pheromone Foils Gypsy Moth
Males
![Gypsy moth caterpillar](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20081105104857im_/http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/dec97/k5504-4i.jpg)
Gypsy moth caterpillar. (K5504-4)
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Scientists are looking to sabotage the gypsy moth's love life by
air-dropping mini pheromone dispensers into tree canopies where the insect
mates.
Their aim is a chemical-free way to prevent the moth's caterpillar
offspring, which hungrily defoliate forest and shade trees such as oak and
poplar.
Kevin W. Thorpe and ARS colleagues
envision using standard, planeborne sprayer equipment to seed the dispensers
into the tree canopy. Held to leaves, branches, and trunks by means of gluelike
sticker, the dispensers' job would be to saturate the air with Disparlure, a
commercially produced pheromone that mimics the natural chemical sex attractant
of female moths.
"With so much synthetic pheromone in the air, the male is actually
unable to home-in on the real thing coming from a female," says Thorpe, an
entomologist at ARS' Insect Biocontrol Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland.
The two types of dispensers that are being investigated look like tiny
plastic beads and flakes of confetti less than 3 millimeters in size. Both
forms are fashioned after commercial designs, Thorpe says.
In past years, pheromone strips were hung by hand in trees to try to disrupt
mating. But studies showed that air-dropping the tiny dispensers places more of
the attractant where it's most effectivehigh in the tree canopy, where
the moths usually mate.
"When you have a huge area of forest," notes Thorpe's colleague
Barbara Leonhardt, "hanging strips becomes impractical." She is
director of ARS' Plant Sciences Institute in Beltsville.
The focus now, she adds, is to perfect inexpensive ways of formulating the
dispensers so they'll flow freely from aircraft sprayers.
Leonhardt and Thorpe see the pheromone primarily as an insecticide-free
weapon against new or isolated infestations of the moth. Use of the
dispensersalong with other natural weapons such as insect viruses or
Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)would allow USDA's Forest Service
personnel and others greater flexibility in halting the moth's assault on
forest or woodland near wildlife preserves or residential areas.
Thorpe says field studies of the two dispenser designs have been
encouraging. In a recent test conducted in Virginia's Augusta and Rockridge
Counties, use of the dispensers kept nearly 100 percent of moths from mating.
That, as a result, cut the number of fertile egg masses by 75 to 100 percent on
pheromone-protected trees, compared to those in untreated plots.
By adjusting dispenser size, it is possible to regulate the amount and rate
of pheromone that's released.
One reason this is important is the $12 to $20 per-acre cost for pheromone.
Add to that the $3 to $8 cost of incorporating it into the bead or flake,
respectively.
Another reason is that it ensures the pheromone will last throughout the
moth's 3- to 6-week mating period, which kicks off in late June to early July.
If too much pheromone is released, the supply depletes itself too soon; if
there's too little, a male may succeed in finding one of the flightless
females.
So what actually happens when the moths fail to meet? She'll still deposit
eggs, though they'll be sterile. And the hapless male? Says Thorpe: "It'll
eventually use up its energy reserves and die, because it doesn't feed."
By Jan Suszkiw
Kevin W.
Thorpe is at the USDA-ARS Insect Biocontrol Laboratory, Bldg 306 BARC-EAST,
10300 Baltimore Ave., Beltsville, MD 20705-2350; phone (301) 504-5139
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