Location: Insect Control and Cotton Disease Research
Project Number: 3091-22000-033-016-T
Project Type: Trust Fund Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2015
End Date: Dec 31, 2019
Objective:
1) Determine relative abundance of cotton fleahopper adults and nymphs in cotton fields and surrounding weed hosts; and 2) Collect cotton fleahopper adults and nymphs from cotton and weed hosts at specified distances from cotton fields for future genomic analyses to determine level of intermixing among populations of fleahoppers in cotton and wild weed hosts on a spatial and temporal scale.
Approach:
The relative abundance of cotton fleahopper adults and nymphs in multiple cotton fields and surrounding weed hosts within a quarter-mile of each cotton field will be assessed weekly to bi-weekly from approximately the first week cotton bloom until defoliation. Sampled weed hosts will be identified to species, and the growth stage of cotton and weed hosts will be documented during each sampling interval. Fleahopper densities in cotton (minimum of 10 sampling sites per field) and weed hosts (minimum of 5 sampling sites per location) will be determined using the same sampling technique (sweep net and/or beat bucket) to standardize fleahopper densities among the different plant types. In conjunction, fleahopper adults and nymphs (>30 individuals of each stage per location/field) will be collected from multiple cotton fields and from weed hosts at specified distances from cotton (<1 mile, between 1-10 miles, and 10-20 miles). Collected specimens will be preserved in alcohol for future DNA analyses to determine the level of intermixing among populations of fleahoppers in cotton and weed hosts.
