Multi-component attract-and-kill system for pest insects attacking cucurbit crops

Authors: Wallingford, Anna; HABER, ARIELA - US Department Of Agriculture (USDA); HALAWEISH, FATHI - South Dakota State University; OSTLUND, TREVOR - University Of Minnesota; Weber, Donald

Submitted to: Journal of Economic Entomology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/13/2025
Publication Date: 7/18/2025
Citation: Wallingford, A.K., Haber, A., Halaweish, F., Ostlund, T., Weber, D.C. 2025. Multi-component attract-and-kill system for pest insects attacking cucurbit crops. Journal of Economic Entomology. 88 : 112 – 116. https://doi.org/10.1093/jee/toaf172.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jee/toaf172

Interpretive Summary: Cucurbit (melon, squash and pumpkin) growers must manage multiple damaging pests to their crops. They often rely on broad-spectrum insecticides to protect their crops from insect pests, but these can disrupt beneficial insects, including the essential pollinators of the crop. Behavioral controls, using the insect pests’ own pheromones and other attractants, offer alternative tactics that are very specific to the target pests, to divert pests away from crops to baits or bait stations where they are safely captured or killed. This behavioral control tactic is known as “attract and kill.” We aimed to evaluate which components were critical for behavioral control of cucumber beetles, which are key cucurbit pests. We tested different combinations of three components: encouraging them to eat the baits applied to the bait stations the striped cucumber beetle pheromone that lures insects to bait stations, watermelon juice odors that are also attractive, and the bitter crop compounds known as cucurbitacins that are feeding stimulants for the beetles. We found that all three components were critical to an effective attract-and-kill system for our target organism, striped cucumber beetle, as well as for a related pest species, spotted cucumber beetle. These findings should interest to growers, pest managers and researchers of cucurbit crops, and promote further development of effective and economical behavioral controls.

Technical Abstract: Attract-and-kill is a behavioral control tactic for managing insect pests, which relies on semiochemicals to draw insects to a discrete location where they are killed or captured. We conducted a full factorial field experiment to evaluate the effect of three semiochemical components in an attract-and-kill approach for management of stiped cucumber beetle, Acalymma vittatum (F.)(Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae). We found that the synthetic aggregation pheromone (vittatalactone) and stimuli associated with host plants (sweet watermelon juice, bitter cucurbitacin-E-glycoside) were all critical components for both spring and fall attract-and-kill deployments for A. vittatum and a related species, spotted cucumber beetle, Diabrotica undecimpunctata Mannerheim (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae). We also evaluated methods of dispatching pest aggregations, finding that ground-positioned boll weevil traps captured a significantly smaller proportion of A. vittatum than clear sticky traps or two variations of our bait station that killed or captured 60-85% of beetles in caged bioassays. We also investigated potential vicinity effects around these trap and bait station designs at three commercial farms, finding more A. vitattum on plants neighboring boll weevil traps (< 0.5 m from lures) than control plants (> 5m from lures). This pilot attract-and-kill system, while promising, could benefit from modification in attractants and trap or bait design for cost reduction and improved efficacy, and attention to timing and positioning, to avoid undesirable competition from the crop to be protected.