A monitoring trap for Diabrotica virgifera virgifera and D. barberi adults lured with a poisoned cucurbitacin bait.

A trap is described that uses as a simple natural ingredient a cucurbitacin mixture to capture and carbaryl insecticide to kill northern and western corn rootworm beetles (Diabrotica barberi Smith and Lawrence, and Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte (D.v.v.), respectively). The trap is consistent in numbers of beetles captured per trap per day, and it should be useful in integrated pest management programs to monitor the population density of rootworm beetles in corn fields. Captures between 1981 and 1983 in Illinois showed that western corn rootworm adults that disperse into first-year cornfields were predominantly females. These traps are being utilized today (2003) by many researchers in the New World desiring to know more about rootworm beetle movement and activities. Entomologists in the Old World confronted with the alien invasive pest D.v.v. should profit likewise from increased knowledge and availability of these traps for Diabrotica management.