Design Factors That Influence the Performance of Flight Intercept Traps for the Capture of Longhorned Beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) from the Subfamilies Lamiinae and Cerambycinae

Millar JG (2014) Design Factors That Influence the Performance of Flight Intercept Traps for the Capture of Longhorned Beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) from the Subfamilies Lamiinae and Cerambycinae. PLoS ONE 9(3): e93203. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0093203 Design Factors That Influence the Performance of Flight Intercept Traps for the Capture of Longhorned Beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) from the Subfamilies Lamiinae and Cerambycinae Jeremy D. Allison 0 Basu D. Bhandari 0 Jessica L. McKenney 0 Jocelyn G. Millar 0 Nicholas J. Mills, University of California, Berkeley, United States of America 0 1 Department of Entomology, Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, LSU Campus, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States of America, 2 Department of Entomology, University of California Riverside , Riverside, California , United States of America In North America, cerambycid beetles can have significant ecological and economic effects on forest ecosystems, and the rate of introduction and/or detection of exotic species is increasing. Detection and survey programs rely on semiochemicalbaited intercept traps which are often ineffective for large woodborers like cerambycid beetles. This study examined the effects of flight intercept trap design on the capture of cerambycid beetles in the subfamilies Lamiinae and Cerambycinae. These subfamilies are the two largest in the Cerambycidae and they include many of the most damaging cerambycid pests and species on regulatory watch lists in North America. This study demonstrates that intercept trap design, treatment of trap surfaces with a lubricant, and the type of collection cup all influence the capture of beetles from the subfamilies Lamiinae and Cerambycinae. It also demonstrates that the addition of a large lubricant-treated collar to the bottom funnel of a multiple-funnel trap significantly increases the capture of some Lamiinae. The best trap design for both subfamilies was a lubricant treated multiple-funnel [MF] trap equipped with a wet cup and lubricant treated large collar on the bottom funnel. This design captured between 4 and 14 times more Lamiinae and Cerambycinae than commercially-available MF and panel traps. - Funding: This work was supported by Canadian Forest Service, USDA-APHIS-PPQ award 11-8130-1422 and the LSU AgCenter. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. International movement of people and goods, and the associated high-risk pathways for biological invasions (e.g., air cargo, container, and refrigerated shipping) continue to increase globally, resulting in increased introductions of insect species outside of their native ranges [1]. The majority of these species do not become established and go unnoticed [2]. However, those that do establish can cause substantial economic and ecological damage [3,4]. These invasive species represent one of the most significant threats to the health of forests in North America [5]. The larvae of large wood-boring insects feed cryptically in the wood, and their development can take months to years, facilitating their introduction in wood products, wooden packing materials, and nursery stock. Among invasive insect species, large woodborers (cerambycid and buprestid beetles, siricid wasps) represent one of the most serious threats to forest health globally [610] and it appears that their rate of detection, and likely their rate of introduction into new geographic areas, is increasing [1]. Cost estimates of the potential damage that might be caused by nonnative forest insects, generated using a modeling approach suggest that among three major feeding guilds [wood- and phloem-borers, sap feeders, and foliage feeders], wood- and phloem boring insects have the highest associated costs [11]. In North America alone, recent introductions of the brown spruce borer Tetropium fuscum (Fabricius), the Asian longhorned beetle Anoplophora glabripennis (Motschulsky), the eucalyptus longhorned borers Phoracantha semipunctata (Fabricius) and P. recurva Newman, the emerald ash borer Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, and the woodwasp Sirex noctilio F. are estimated to have resulted in hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in direct losses and costs of control and containment measures [5,9,12,13]. There are three distinct population processes in biological invasions: arrival (transport of individuals to areas outside their native range), establishment (growth of populations to levels high enough that extinction is unlikely), and spread (expansion of an invading species range) [14]. Invasive species management strategies integrate regulatory and preventive measures to limit the arrival of exotics, and eradication and containment tactics to limit establishment and spread of exotics post-entry [14]. The success of containment and eradication efforts is predicated on the development of tools for the survey and detection of low-density populations of the target species (e.g., effective attractants and traps have been crucial to the success of gypsy moth containment efforts [15,16]). Effective survey and detection tools are essential because: 1) as populations of the invasive species increase, the probability of containment and eradication decreases; 2) successful containment and eradication requires that the distribution of the target species be accurately defined, on an ongoing basis; and 3) evaluation of the success of management efforts is not possible without good monitoring tools [14,1719]. Our ability to develop operational detection and survey programs for invasive cerambycid beetles is hindered by the lack of effective survey and detection tools. Existing surveillance methods for large woodborers rely primarily on visual inspection during aerial, drive-through, and ground surveys, or flight intercept traps baited with host volatiles. Visual surveys have limited power to detect low-density populations [20], and are expensive, laborious, and time-consuming [14]. Although monitoring traps work well for some bark and ambrosia beetles [21], they are not yet very effective for large woodborers. Despite the prominent status of both native and exotic cerambycids as pests of forest and urban trees, plantations, orchards, and lumber and wooden structures [2224], until recently little was known about their chemical ecology. As recently as 10 years ago, pheromones had been reported for only nine out of the ,35,000 described cerambycid species [24]. Volatile pheromones and related attractants are now known for .100 species [25,26], and this number is increasing rapidly. Although some progress has been made in trap designs for cerambycid beetles [2733], advances in this field have not paralleled the advances made in the identification of semiochemical attractants. There is little point in developing attractants if there are n (...truncated)