Insect EcologyUnderstanding the interrelationships of insects and their environment is crucial to devising strategies to protect crops susceptible to economic impact by pests. Movement of cotton aphids, whiteflies and plant bugs among overwintering weeds, alfalfa and cotton occurs each year. In some years, these insects are important pests of cotton and in others are not economically important. Understanding population dynamics that cause pest outbreaks can lead to predictive tools. Knowledge of pest-risk aids farm planning and specific techniques used in pest management.

Lygus bugs managment Will this be a bad year for Lygus bugs?How many Lygus are in a given field?

Lygus dispersal research• The seasonal distribution of Lygus

hesperus shows distinct early generation peaks

• Capture data showed dispersal differences due to sex, crop, and cardinal direction

• Simulations predict Lygus distribution for any given landscape

• Lygus dispersal distribution suggests movement among nearby fields and not regional migration

A typical crop pattern in the San Joaquin Valley Arthropods move among various crops in close

proximity to each other.

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Monitoring arthropod community for regional population dynamics and test data for modeling

Agricultural crop mosaicSurvey areas for assessing landscape dynamics of arthropods and predicting pest distribution

The mechanistic basis of population dynamics

Objectives :• Improved sampling and

field management• Pest population

forecasting

Approach : • We are acquiring arthropod abundance, remotely sensed imagery, and climatic data. • Modeling is critical successful integration of empirical results

Parasitoid stinging aphid

Sticky Cotton

Whitefly photos taken Aug 19 at SREC

Lygus hesperusOver 100 host plants

Development time ~month

Reproductive diapause - Nov-Feb

Moves from weeds into alfalfa and cotton fields

Further Researchvegetation from Feb 25 (Modis)

Simulation• NDVI – Used ArcGIS properties to histogram

stretch on black and white, export bitmap• In Photoshop, resample to pixel size, clip

ROI, set image mode indexed, use custom palette (no dithering)