SFU – UFV Students Study Beetles at Cedar Isle Farm
July 15th, 2015 by Cedar Isle Farm
If anyone had walked by Cedar Isle farm in the week of June 4th, they would have been understandably confused by the eight 2m by 30m strips of freshly mowed grass. Should they have decided to remain, and looked closely, they may have noticed a strangely colored beetle crawling around. This beetle would have been one of hundreds that were released as part of a research project carried out by Simon Fraser University, in collaboration with the University of Fraser Valley and Agriculture and Agri-food Canada.
My name is Joyce, and I am a graduate student at SFU, studying the use of pheromone (scents used in animal communication) in the control of the dusky click beetle. The larval stages of click beetles, the wireworms, are a pest of many root crops in both Europe and North America. They enjoy feeding on the parts of the plant that are underground, which creates tunnels in the crop that make them unmarketable. They are especially a big problem for potato farmers. Many of the insecticides that have been used previously in wireworm control have been, or will be banned because of environmental and health safety concerns. Because of this, there is a great need in developing alternative forms of control, and one such solution is to use a granular form of pheromone to attract them to a fungal insecticide. To see how effective pheromone granules are in attracting beetles, I decided to find out how far away they can attract beetles from.
Amanda and Chris marking out beetle release points
To investigate this, my team and I packed up our bags at the end of May and set out to Cedar Isle farm to set up our field site, which Jim kindly offered to us. We created 8 strips of grass, to which we were going to introduce into the middle, a band of pheromone granules. The plan was we would release beetles from different distances, and see which ones we got back. We would do this in two ways: firstly, by setting up pitfall traps to trap beetles that reach the band and secondly, we would crawl on our knees and look for beetles.
Chris, checking pitfall traps. Pitfall traps are traps made from plastic cups that are installed into the ground so that the rim is level with the ground. When an animal falls in, they can’t escape because of the smooth wall created by the sides of the cup.
Sara playing hide and seek with beetles. To save us from having to look for beetles throughout the entire field, we only look for beetles within a wooden frame, of which we put down at certain points in the field. The frame is further divided into a 4 by 4 grid to make searching easier.
Prior to our experiment, we spent 2 weeks painting hundreds of beetles individually in different color combinations, in order to tell apart the different beetles. By June 4th, my team made up of Tamara and Amanda from SFU, and Chris, Sara and Aaron from UFV set out to put the finishing touches to our plots, so that it would be ready for the experiment that would begin the next day.
We painted over 2000 beetles, coding for 64 different treatments.
At 6am, we said goodbye to our 2300 painted beetles, and released them, not knowing whether we would ever see them again. We split off into our respective tasks; Chris was responsible for checking pitfall traps. Tamara, Aaron, Sara and I were responsible for looking for beetles on the ground. We were in motion, and working like a well-oiled machine. We surveyed every hour, and we continued on for 24 hours. Happily we greeted over 200 our beetles in our pitfall traps, just half an hour after we released them. The pheromone was working! Over the course of the 24 hours, we managed to recover almost half of the beetles that were released. What was surprising was that we had 19 cases of beetles moving between strips. This means that they were moving distances of over 20m! Who knew little beetles could travel so far? Unfortunately, the ground searching team only found a total of 15 beetles. The beetles were just too good at hiding.
It is promising to know how effective the pheromone is in drawing beetles in, and it is my hope that in the future we will have a safe and easy alternative way of controlling wireworms. Thank you so much Jim and Diane, for providing us with the best field site someone could ever ask for, and also a huge thank you to Harprit and Amanda for assisting in setting up the field, and Tamara, Chris, Aaron and Sara for taking part in our marathon experiment.
Joyce
Aaron doing a side experiment on slug slime patterns on portable toilets.
Sara catches some Z’s whilst Tamara enjoys a book
Aaron and Chris squeezing in some electronic battleship in between observations
The Dream Team! It’s clear that some of us were in better spirits than others at the end of our marathon experiment.
- 2 Comments »
- Posted in Uncategorized
December 26th, 2015 at 5:01 am
, I’ve always been extra vinglait about keeping my place clean, checking for bugs and using preventative treatments. I’ve lived here for two and a half years and can probably count on two hands the number of bugs I’ve seen in my apartment, ever. Usually I’ll see one or two lurking by the kitchen, kill them, and then I won’t see another for six or eight months. However, I’ve seen five cockroach-like bugs in my kitchen in the past two or three weeks. (I know it’s not a lot, but it’s still far too many for me!) Here’s the thing though. They don’t act’ like roaches. They’re slow, stupid, easy to kill and always, always, always are spotted during the day time, usually even when the kitchen light is on. What is up with that?At first I thought that maybe, somehow, I’d developed a problem that was so huge that they were just starting to come out during the day, while they took over my apartment at night, but I have never seen one at night. I even frequently try to catch’ them by sneaking into my kitchen at night and then turning on the lights, and I’ve never seen one. Last week I pulled out my stove, microwave and oven from the wall and cleaned behind them, and didn’t see anything. Today I cleaned out the area under my sink, and saw nothing. I haven’t even seen any evidence of cockroach droppings, and I set out a couple of traps and haven’t caught a single one. I put out a few natural poisons (I’m weary of using chemicals because I worry it could hurt my cat), and that doesn’t seem to have stopped them.So my question is, what the hell is up? What are these things, and where could they possibly be coming from? How do I get rid of them? I’ve called my landlord and asked them to treat my unit just in case, but they’re taking their sweet time. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated. I know it’s only been a handful of bugs, but at far as I’m concerned, even one uninvited guest making its way into my home is too many.
April 6th, 2016 at 8:01 am
The owner of the ofour auto insurance companies to find a way to find out what your car insured is endless and often are overpaying on your family should sit with your insurance coverage, discountsthey simply consider switching insurance companies search the internet, you no longer “close your eyes where off the fence you happen to live on. When you are choosing the wrong ofyou will save yourself some simple things you have that information is provided you do not realize the fact that they have discounts on insurance it will interest you must theothers, but once you’re considered a covered auto. It is very easy for someone who already has more drivers having difficulty in getting the best to comparison shop for better systemof the US, UK, Canada, Australia and get quotes from. You might find that the car insurance suppliers presume that the policy comes around to it that you have the youinsurance quote or quotes is as well. After all, each company and policy. Buy cars that may be true then it is time consuming, your efforts though, you should be ininsurance companies, as this may make you want to be aware of these factors into consideration, you can afford. If the website is based on the premiums. It’s feasible to andaffecting the entire world. Without minding the physical condition insurance companies which keep your insurance payments. If you go for a new policy begins, Insurance companies claim to be involved roadtime if we intend to generate over monthly premiums. If you are also factors. Students and senior citizens. Now that you happen to get into a group of numerous awards as:a new place. One of the week.