Brown stink bug, Euschistus servus, movement within cotton fields

As plants senesce or are harvested, numbers of Brown stink bug, Euschistus servus migrate from crops that act as host plants, such as; shrubs, many broadleaf weeds, corn, soybean, sorghum, millet, snap beans, into nearby susceptible crops (ie. Cotton).  The presence of host crops in close proximity to susceptible crops increases the difficulty of managing Brown stink bugs in cotton. When pheromone trapping was used, greater numbers of E. servus (n -= 89) over a shorter sampling period were recovered when compared to sweep sampling. Pheromone trapping revealed that there did not appear to be a significant aggregation of E. servus along cotton field perimeters, although there is a general trend of reducing populations as you penetrate deeper into cotton fields from the field perimeter. Associated damage done to cotton bolls caused by E. servus feeding and the resultant cotton boll rot was not found significantly damaging in this trial. This suggests that the presence of cotton boll rotting pathogens plays a significant role in cotton yield loss. However low the presence of cotton boll rot, there is the same general trend of reducing incidence of cotton boll rot as you move away from the cotton field perimeter. Low incidence of cotton boll rotting bacteria suggests that damage done by E. servus in California is limited to direct damage by the insect feeding itself. This is similarly reflected in the lack of significant differences of HVI color classing between the sampling locations as you away from the cotton field perimeter.