Wireworms (Coleoptera: Elateridae): A ‘Pinball Wizard’s’ approach to winning the escalating war with negligible collateral damage

The management of various wireworm species in various agricultural crops has traditionally involved the use of environmentally insensitive organochlorine, organophosphate and carbamate insecticides applied to soil or seed. Many of these insecticides are now obsolete worldwide, or soon will be, and wireworm populations and damage are reported to be on the rise globally. Some modern day insecticides will manage damage by wireworms on various crops, but do so through long term intoxication (neonicotinoids) or repulsion (pyrethroids), and populations of key species are not significantly reduced. This paper describes a number of newly developed behaviour-modifying approaches to managing crop damage by wireworms and eliminating economic populations for 3-4 years with less than a gram of insecticide per hectare.