Location: Insect Behavior and Biocontrol Research
Project Number: 6036-30400-002-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: Oct 1, 2025
End Date: Sep 30, 2030
Objective:
Objective 1: Develop and improve early detection and monitoring of invasive pests, such as corn silk flies, stored product pests, and red palm weevil utilizing sensory and behavioral analysis of important cues (acoustic, visual, chemical) that can be incorporated into surveillance and monitoring programs.
Sub-objective 1A. Developing acoustic technology to detect and impact pest behavior.
Sub-objective 1B. Combining multiple cues to improve trapping efficiency.
Objective 2: Assess the impact of host habitat, climate, and season on the development and reproductive behaviors of agricultural pests including fall armyworm, cornsilk fly, soybean looper, Old World bollworm, and corn earworm in the field to explain observed infestation patterns.
Objective 3: Improve sterile insect technique and conditional lethal technologies to control a wide range of insect species including caribfly, mexfly, medfly, spotted-winged drosophilids and emerging pest species. This will involve the development of new DNA delivery systems and the use of genetic modification to induce female lethality or male sterility through conditional gene or protein function.
Objective 4: Use genetic markers to map the hemispheric and global distribution of migratory insect pests such as fall armyworm, cornsilk fly, soybean looper, Old World bollworm, and corn earworm to assess the impact of biological, geological and climatological factors on their dispersal behaviors.
Approach:
Research conducted by the Insect Behavior and Biocontrol Research Unit at the Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology (CMAVE/IBBRU) has historically been focused on the development of novel technologies that improve the cost-efficiency of traditional pest control strategies as well as provide environmentally benign alternatives to the use of chemical pesticides. The research focuses on invasive species, populations, and genetic traits, which in a globalized economy represents significant threats to the nation’s agriculture. This proposal integrates different levels of biology that include 1) the optimization of acoustic, olfactory, and visual cues to improve pest surveillance and potentially disrupt pest behavior, 2) understanding how environmental factors impact the distribution of pests at migratory source locations, 3) the genetic modification of pest insects to generate novel and improved variations of Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) strategies, and 4) the application of genetic markers to project pest distribution and migration patterns. This multidisciplinary structure encourages innovation and facilitates synergism between projects. Anticipated accomplishments will be the improved capability to monitor pests, better projections of pest distributions over time and space to more effectively target monitoring and treatments, new biologically based methods for the control of high priority invasive fruit flies, beetles, psyllids, moths, and corn silk flies, and the establishment of fall armyworm as a model to identify the major conduits by which invasive moth species, populations, and pesticide resistant traits enter into the United States. The impact will be higher productivity at lower cost for domestic agriculture and new and improved tools to detect and control emerging native and invasive pests. Anticipated beneficiaries will include growers, international groups and U.S. government agencies involved in food safety and food security, and university and corporate research laboratories.