2018 ASHS Annual Conference

Protected culture production of specialty crops has increased over the last twenty years alongside a minor increase in approved insecticides. These insecticides have been investigated for their effects on small soft body arthropods, but very little has been investigated in regards to potential impacts on beneficial insects. Beneficial insects are crucial in integrated pest management systems that require a finely orchestrated balance of plant and pest treatment interactions, which is heavily used in protected culture production. The focus of this research was testing the behavior of adult lady beetles in a choice assay with five OMRI approved insecticides, a positive control (DEET) and negative control (acetone) to ascertain if there is any associated repellence or irritability characteristics from these insecticides versus the solvent (acetone). A ViewPointä tracking system was used with a single adult released in the untreated center of a Plexiglas arena with two adjacent areas for choice (treated and control). Collected data included ambulatory time, walking distance, velocity, and proportion of time spent in each area for 10 minutes. This assay violates ANOVA assumptions of normality and homoscedasticity thus, the Wilcoxon rank sum test was used to test the significance of differences in treatment response. Adult lady beetles expressed repellency characteristics upon contact with DEET, but not for the acetone control. Of the five OMRI pesticides, PyGanic® showed repellency and Ecotec® showed irritability. OMRI approved insecticides can affect beneficial insect foraging as we saw with two of insecticides (PyGanic® and Ecotec®) which impeded the foraging ability of the adult lady beetles.