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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Insect Sci.
Sec. Invasive Insect Species
Volume 4 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/finsc.2024.1505524
This article is part of the Research Topic Areawide Pest Management and Agroecosystem Resilience to Suppress Invasive Insects View all 4 articles

Forecasting the seasonal phenology of Agrotis ipsilon in Oregon grass seed and vegetable agroecosystems

Provisionally accepted
Emma Slone Emma Slone 1Jessica Green Jessica Green 2Navneet Kaur Navneet Kaur 3Darrin Walenta Darrin Walenta 3Nicole P Anderson Nicole P Anderson 4Casey Cruse Casey Cruse 1Seth Dorman Seth Dorman 1,3*
  • 1 Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit, Agricultural Research Service (USDA), Corvallis, Oregon, United States
  • 2 Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology, College of Agricultural Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, United States
  • 3 Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, College of Agricultural Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, United States
  • 4 Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO), Grimstad, Norway

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Agrotis ipsilon (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is a significant pest in Oregon grass seed and vegetable production systems. Effective management of this species relies on timely foliar insecticide applications targeting immature A. ipsilon larvae before crop damage is observed. Regionally specific phenological models serve as a critical component of effective areawide pest management plans to inform the timing of pest monitoring and management action. Seasonal modeling of A. ipsilon phenology is complicated by their migratory behavior and limited knowledge of temperature-dependent development on affected crop hosts. Growth chamber experiments at five constant temperatures (12 to 32°C) were conducted to determine the temperature-dependent development of A. ispsilon life stages on an artificial and perennial ryegrass diet. The completion of one A. ipsilon generation (egg-to-adult) required 658.71 ± 31.49, 601.98 ± 16.01, 648.47 ± 21.35 degree days with a base temperature threshold of 9.8°C for artificial diet, perennial ryegrass diet, and across both diet types, respectively. The timing of migrant adults was predicted with surface air temperature using non-linear regression with A. ipsilon abundance data collected from pheromone-baited traps in 77 total commercial grass seed (n = 57) and vegetable (n = 20) production fields across 19 sampling years (1996 to 2023). Developmental parameters and predictions of adult arrival were used to develop general and grass seed specific phenology model projections for A. ipsilon populations in Oregon. Regionally validated phenology models can be incorporated into decision support tools to forecast the spatiotemporal occurrence of crop-damaging life stages of priority insect pests.

    Keywords: Black cutworm, Lolium perenne, Pest forecasts, Phenological modeling, temperaturedependent development

    Received: 03 Oct 2024; Accepted: 20 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Slone, Green, Kaur, Walenta, Anderson, Cruse and Dorman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Seth Dorman, Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit, Agricultural Research Service (USDA), Corvallis, 97331, Oregon, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.