Attractiveness of an Aggregation Pheromone Lure and Chicken Droppings to Adults and Larvae of Alphitobius diaperinus (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

Singh, N.; Johnson, D. T.

The laboratory two-choice pitfall bioassay was found to be a useful and convenient tool for evaluating the attractants for lesser mealworm adults and larvae before testing them in a poultry house. Similar studies were done to assess pheromone performance in laboratory pitfall bioassays for the rice weevil, Sitophilus oryzae (L.) (Phillips and Burkholder 1981) , the sawtoothed grain beetle, Oryzaephilus surinamensis (L.) (Mikolajczak et al. 1984) , the maize weevil, Sitophilus zeamais Motschulsky and the red ßour beetle, Tribolium castaneum Herbst (Phillips et al. 1993 ). In the current study, adults and larvae were strongly attracted to a dose of 20 Ð30 g synthetic lesser mealworm pheromone lure in laboratory pitfall bioassays. Lesser mealworm adults can perceive pheromones at lower doses, and were also more attracted than the larvae to higher doses of 50 and 100 g. Our laboratory and Þeld results conÞrm the larval attraction to adult pheromones. It is not known whether larvae of lesser mealworm produce compounds similar to adult emit- Experiment had a randomized complete block design, with six traps for each pheromone and control within each of four blocks, replicated on 4 d. Analysis was on log (X ϩ 1) transformed data. Within a day, or for overall means, values followed by the different letter are signiÞcantly different (P Ͻ 0.05; ANOVA). Experiment had a randomized complete block design, with six traps for each pheromone and control within each of four blocks, replicated on 4 d. Analysis was on log (X ϩ 1) transformed data. Within a day, or for overall means, values followed by the different letter are signiÞcantly different (P Ͻ 0.05; ANOVA). ted volatile proÞles or not. Both adults and larvae feed on chicken feed and poultry manure (Pfeiffer and Axtell 1980) . The larvae may have adapted and evolved the behavioral responses to male-produced aggregation pheromones for exploiting food resources and shelter occupied by adults.