insect, california, agriculture

1. Insect Ecology
Understanding the interrelationships of insects and
their environment is crucial to devising strategies to
protect crops susceptible to economic impact by
pests. Movement of cotton aphids, whiteflies and
plant bugs among overwintering weeds, alfalfa and
cotton occurs each year. In some years, these insects
are important pests of cotton and in others are not
economically important. Understanding population
dynamics that cause pest outbreaks can lead to
predictive tools. Knowledge of pest-risk aids farm
planning and specific techniques used in pest
management.

2. Lygus bugs managment
Will this be a bad year for Lygus bugs?
How many Lygus are in a given field?

3. Lygus dispersal research
• The seasonal distribution of Lygus
hesperus shows distinct early
generation peaks
• Capture data showed dispersal
differences due to sex, crop, and
cardinal direction
• Simulations predict Lygus
distribution for any given landscape
• Lygus dispersal distribution suggests
movement among nearby fields and
not regional migration

4. A typical crop pattern in the San Joaquin Valley
Arthropods move among various crops in close
proximity to each other.
You are here ->

5. Monitoring arthropod community for regional
population dynamics and test data for modeling

6. Agricultural crop mosaic
Survey areas for assessing landscape dynamics
of arthropods and predicting pest distribution

7. The mechanistic basis of population dynamics
Approach :
• We are acquiring arthropod abundance, remotely
sensed imagery, and climatic data.
• Modeling is critical successful integration of
empirical results
Objectives :
• Improved sampling and
field management
• Pest population
forecasting

8. Parasitoid stinging aphid

9. Sticky Cotton
Whitefly photos taken
Aug 19 at SREC

10. Lygus hesperus
Over 100 host plants
Development time ~month
Reproductive diapause - Nov-Feb
Moves from weeds into alfalfa and cotton fields

11. Further Research
vegetation from Feb 25 (Modis)

12. Simulation
• NDVI – Used ArcGIS properties to histogram
stretch on black and white, export bitmap
• In Photoshop, resample to pixel size, clip
ROI, set image mode indexed, use custom
palette (no dithering)