Plant volatiles and thrips; Are attractants arresting?
Teulon D, Davidson M, James D
New Zealand Institute for Crop & Food Research Limited, Private Bag 4704, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Correspondence: davidsonm@crop.cri.nz
Anemotaxis is the principal behavior used by larger insects, such as lepidoptera, to locate mates, and presumably, suitable hosts. For smaller insects like thrips, orientation to a volatile compound using wind would be difficult because of their poor ability to fly. We propose that so called attractant volatile compounds potentially elicit an arresting response in flying thrips. Thrips¨ flight could be inhibited by such arrestants, so thrips do not fly in the presence of these compounds, or if they are in flight, these arrestants trigger a landing response. Arrestant activity has potentially been involved in thrips response to selected compounds in laboratory studies where fewer thrips flew in the presence of a volatile compound. Field trials were undertaken using black baited or unbaited water traps; or white unbaited water traps set at varying distances (0.5, 1, 2, 5, and 10 m) radiating out from a centrally baited trap. The volatile compound appears to elicit a landing response in flying thrips, because a higher number of thrips were recorded in baited black water traps. The central white water traps baited with a volatile compound had the highest numbers of thrips, with decreasing numbers recorded in unbaited traps within 2 m downwind of the central trap.
