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

Singh, N.; Johnson, D. T.

Attraction of adults to pheromones is well documented in many tenebrionids including the red ßour beetle, Tribolium castaneum Herbst (Rangaswamy and Sasikala 1991) , the yellow mealworm, Tenebrio molitor L. (Tanaka et al. 1986 ), the broad-horned ßour beetle, Gnatocerus cornutus F. (Tebayashi et al. 1998 , Tashiro et al. 2004 , and the desert tenebrionid beetle Parastizopus transgariepinus Koch (Geiselhardt et al. 2008) . Volatile collections from lesser mealworm males and females revealed four male-speciÞc compounds, including: (R)-(ϩ)-limonene, (E)-␤-ocimene, (S)-(ϩ)-linalool, and (R)-(ϩ)-daucene (Bartelt et al. 2009 ). A Þfth compound, 2-nonanone was also iden-tiÞed from male, and in small amounts from female lesser mealworms. Synthetic lesser mealworm aggregation pheromone lure referred to hereafter as "pheromone lure" composed of these Þve compounds was attractive to both sexes in preliminary laboratory pitfall bioassays (Bartelt et al. 2009 ). However, the dosedependent response to pheromone lure, and the attractiveness of individual pheromone lure compo-nents have never been tested to adults and larvae in laboratory conditions. Adult and larval attraction to adult-produced pheromones have been described in codling moth, Cydia pomonella L. (Duthie et al. 2003) , and T. castaneum (Mondal and Port 1984) . Lesser mealworm adults and larvae are unevenly distributed in poultry houses in clumps or in aggregations (Falomo 1986 ). Adults and larvae placed in a petri dish with wood shavings form tight aggregations suggesting some sort of assembling scent present that leads to their aggregation behavior (Falomo 1986 ). These aggregations also suggest the existence of pheromonal communication among adults and larvae of lesser mealworm. The attractiveness of adult-produced pheromone lure to larvae of lesser mealworm needs to be explored in laboratory and Þeld conditions. Successful mass trapping using male-produced synthetic aggregation pheromones and plant co-attractants has been reported for bean weevil, Acanthoscelides obtectus (Say), pea leaf weevil, Sitona lineatus L. (Blight et al. 1984) , smaller European elm bark beetle, Scolytus multistriatus (Marsham) (Dickens et al. 1990 ), the coconut Rhinoceros beetle, Oryctes rhinoceros L. (Hallett et al. 1995) , and the red palm weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus Olivier (Abraham et al. 2000) . Adults and larvae of lesser mealworm were observed to be attracted to fresh chicken droppings (CD) in a poultry house. Strother and Steelman (2001) reported higher number of lesser mealworm adults and larvae along feed and water lines. This also suggests that the beetles may be attracted to the chicken droppings left behind from feeding birds in addition to their attraction for water and feed. The chicken dropping volatiles (CDV) may act as an attractant to adult and larval lesser mealworm beetles. Studying the interactions between pheromone lure and CDV has an immediate practical signiÞcance in designing more effective traps. These traps can be used to detect early infestations and to attract and kill lesser mealworm beetles in spot treatments rather than spraying the whole poultry house.