Exploration of flora in woods-adjacent crop fields as potential drivers of stink bug colonization in corn by Euschistus servus and other stink bugs within North Carolina
Monday, November 14, 2022
8:48 AM – 9:00 AM PT
Location: Vancouver Convention Centre, Meeting Room 116/117
Professor & Extension Specialist North Carolina State University Plymouth, North Carolina
Euschistus servus (Say) is a polyphagous and multivoltine stink bug pest that damages crops such as corn, soybean, and cotton across much of the southeastern United States. Due to the difficulty of scouting this pest, understanding the early-season colonization of crops, such as corn, would help growers identify this pest as a potential emergent threat within fields. Since woods are known overwintering locations, we hypothesized that the flora present within woods would be influential in E. servus colonization of adjacent corn fields. Over two years, fifty-seven total corn fields were sampled weekly for the presence of stink bugs across the middle and lower Coastal Plain regions of North Carolina. Woods bordering these fields were surveyed using transects at representative areas to identify tree species and herbaceous vegetation. Fields within the lower Coastal Plain were more likely to be bordered by woods containing Pinus spp., and no corn fields reached the economic threshold level for stink bugs. In contrast, fields within the middle Coastal Plain were bordered by woods containing Quercus spp., with 29% of the corn fields we sampled reaching economic threshold levels for stink bugs. Our analysis will home in on these differences to explore if other causal relationships can be drawn with differences in woods fauna between and within regions. Ultimately, our goal is to explore potential relationships between the surrounding non-croplands as overwintering sites for the stink bug complex in North Carolina and their role in subsequent colonization of early season crops.