Real-time monitoring of adult plum curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar) activity in fruit orchards

Continuous twenty-four hour monitoring of insect populations in field conditions provides a better understanding of daily insect activity and also has the potential to improve the precision and efficiency of local pest control. The challenge is to devise a system capable of monitoring insect populations that can operate with minimal human input and within a reasonable budget. This goal was achieved studying a pest of Michigan’s fruit industry, the plum curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar Herbst, Coleoptera: Curculionidae). Whalon-modified Tedder’s pyramid traps designed for catching plum curculio were extensively rebuilt to carry a motion-sensing trigger and a camera. In apple orchards in mid-Michigan, these traps and conventional, non-camera pyramid traps were deployed throughout the summer of 2011. The camera traps collected plum curculio while simultaneously recording and verifying (through the camera) the exact time of trapping. Both natural populations and marked-and-released lab colony populations of plum curculio were collected by the traps as part of the study. The resulting up-to-the-minute records of adult behavior correlate with locally-recorded changes in weather, and these correlations may be useful in timing efforts to combat the pest.