THEORY LECTURE NOTES – 5

Unit–I : Insect Ecology

THEORY LECTURE SCHEDULE 5 - SYLLABUS
5) Definition and categories of pests, biotypes and causes for pest outbreak. Symptoms and losses of pest
attack. Sampling techniques, Surveillance and pest forecasting
LECTURE NOTES
I. PESTS – DEFINITION AND CATEGORIES
a. Pest - Any organism that is detrimental to man and his properties - “Any organism that cause
significant and economic damage to crops, stored produced and animals”.
b. Insect pests - Insects that cause economic loss to plant and plant produces and man.
CATEGORIES
A. Insect pests are classified as follows based on season and locality
i. Regular pests: Pests that occur more frequently on a crop having close association. Eg. Rice
stem borer.
ii. Occasional pests: Pests that occur rather infrequently and have no close association with a
particular crop. Eg. Caseworm of rice, Castor slug caterpillar.
iii. Seasonal pests: Pests that occur on a crop during a particular part of the year. Eg. Red hairy
caterpillar in groundnut.
iv. Persistent pests: Pests, which occur on a crop almost throughout the year. Thrips on chillies.
v. Sporadic pests: Pests, which occur in a few isolated localities Eg. Rice ear head bug.
B. Insects pests are also classified as follows based on intensity of infestations
i. Epidemic pests: Pests, which occur in severe form in a region or locality at a particular
season. Eg. RHC in groundnut in Bhavani, Perambalur, Kulathur, Gingee and Melur taluks.
ii. Endemic pests: Pests, which occur regularly and confined to a particular area of locality. Eg.
Rice Gall midge in Madurai district and rice stem borer cauvery delta.
C. Pests are classified as follows based on damage potential
i. Key pests: These are the most severely damaging pests. The damage is always above the
EIL. Human intervention may bring the population temporarily below the EIL, but it rises
back rapidly and repeated interventions (sprays) may be required to minimize damage.
ii. Major pests: These are pests with the population crosses EIL quite frequently and require
repeated control measures to avoid economic damage. (Damage >10%).
iii. Minor pests: These are pests with population rarely crosses EIL and fluctuates around ETL.
But these pests are easily amenable to available control measures and a single application of
insecticides is usually enough to prevent economic damage (5-10% damage).
iv. Potential pests: These pests normally do not cause any economic damage. Any change in the
ecosystem may make them to cause economic damage (Damage > 5%).
v. Biotype: Defined as “a biological strain of an organism, morphologically indistinguishable
from other members of its species, but exhibiting distinctive physiological characteristics,
particularly in regard to its ability to successfully utilize pest resistant host organisms or to act
as an effective beneficial species”.
II. CAUSES FOR OUTBREAK OF PEST
c. Destruction of forest or bringing forest area under cultivation
This will affect the weather conditions in that locality and thus set favourable conditions for
some insects to assume pest status. A chance for forest tree pests become field crop pests.
d. Destruction of natural enemies
The natural enemies keep the pests under check. Destruction of natural enemies by man due to
indiscriminate use of pesticides tends to increase the population of insects in an area.
e. Intensive and extensive cultivation
When one ore more related crops are raised over extensive area, limitations of food is nullified.
Even if the same crop is grown for more than one season or crops of closely related each other
are grown in rotation will also favour for the increase in insect population.
 f. Introduction of new crops and improved strains
Introduction of new crops in a new area may serve as new hosts for some of the insect pests.
Most of the improved strains of crops are susceptible to pests. Sometimes, the minor pests
become major with the introduction of new varieties or strains.
g. Improved agronomic practices
Good tilth, higher „N‟, closer spacing, weed control etc, improve crop growth and reduce
competition for food.
h. Introduction of new pest in a new area
A pest becomes more abundant when it is introduced into a new area without its natural
enemies. Eg. Apple woolly aphid, Eriosoma lanigera become a serious pest in Nilgiris as there
was no natural enemy of the pest. It was brought under control, when its specific parasite
Aphelinus mali was introduced from Punjab.
i. Introduction of foreign pests
Several insect pests were introduced into India through imported materials. The important are
diamond backmoth, Plutella xylostella, San Jose scale, Quadraspidiotus perniciosus, coffee
green scale, Coccus viridis, Potato tuber moth, Pthorimaea operculella etc.
j. Large-scale storage of food grains
It enhances the stored product pest problems.
k. Resurgence of sucking pests:
Insecticides applied for the control of one pest may tend to offer physiological conditions
favourable for rapid multiplication of some sucking insects (called resurgence)
l. Climatic factors of a particular locality
The environmental factors, when they are favourable, cause pest out break.
III. SAMPLING TECHNIQUES :
Sampling - A representative part of the total population and base our estimate on that part.
Sampling techniques:
A sampling technique is „the method used to collect information for a single sample‟. Different
sampling methods are there as follows:-
1. Random sampling - Taking samples in unspecified area as desired.
2. Point sampling - Taking samples in a planned location.
3. Trap sampling - Using different traps to collect samples. Light trap, pheromone trap etc.
4. Sequential sampling - Collection of samples regularly at specific intervals or fixed place
collection.
The sampling techniques include direct counts (insitu counts), knock down, netting, trapping,
(use of light trap, pheromone trap, sticky trap), extraction from soil etc
Sampling programme :
The procedure for employing the sampling techniques in time and [Link] programme describes
when sampling is to begin, location, number of samples and how often samples should be taken.
Scientific methodologies
For rice, cotton and groundnut, a scientific surveillance methodology has been worked out. The
methodology consists of:
i. Fixed plot survey : In an acre plot, five micro plots of m2 area are marked one each in four
corners (1 m away from bund) and fifth in the centre of the chosen field. Periodical assessment is
done in these micro plots. Plots are to be kept free from chemical sprays till the ETL is reached.
ii. Roving survey : Conducted every week in randomly selected field plots along the prescribed
route of the survey. Observations are recorded from the west corner by a diagonal walk to 100 m.
iii. Decision-making: is the key stone in insect pest management programmes. It indicates the course
of action to be taken in any pest situation. Identification of pest, Life history and behaviour of the
pests, natural regulating factors, need for control measures, timing of control measures and
selection of suitable control measures are critical factors in decision making.
 IV. SYMPTOMS AND LOSSES DUE TO PEST ATTACK
1. Destroyers of crops – Insects destroy our crops at an average of 10 per cent per year by feeding. The
methods of feeding differ as follows
a. Chewing – Done with the help of mandibles. The external part of plant (leaf, stem, flower) were cut
off, ground and swallowed – grasshoppers, beetles and lepidopteran caterpillars. Some of then
skeletonize the leaves (brinjal epilachna beetle and teak skeletonizer) or even denuding the plants
(groundnut red hairy caterpillar and grasshoppers) in 1922 the grasshoppers (locusts) had denuded the
crops in Canada that livestocks had to be shipped out of the country to let them survive.
i. Few examples – feed on growing points - grapevine flea beetle (Scelodonta strigicollis), cotton
spotted bollworm (Earias vitella) and brinjal shoot and fruit borer (Leucinodes orbanalis).
ii. Feed on leaves and defoliate – groundnut redhairy caterpillar, castor semilooper, sesame sphinx
caterpillar
iii. Notching and nibbling – grasshoppers in rice, ashweevils, leaf cutter bee (semi-circular notching)
iv. Make small holes on leaves (Radish flea beetle)
v. Leaves riddled with large holes (Cabbage semilooper)
vi. Leaf rolling and folding (Rice leaf folder and cotton leaf roller)
vii. Cut the stem (Potato cut worm)
viii. Feed on flower buds and flowers (Blister beetle on redgram and cetoniid beetle on rose buds)
ix. Eat partially on the grains (Heliocoverpa armigera on maize).
b. Piercing and sucking – done with the help of long slender and sharply pointed proboscis which is
thrust into the plant to suck out the sap. The sucking results in minute spottings of white, brown or
red on leaves, fruits or twigs or curling of leaves. Insects of the order hemiptera (bugs, leafhoppers,
aphids, mealybugs, whiteflies, psyllids etc.)
i. Chlorosis (aphids, leaf hoppers) – withering and drying (lab lab aphid) – Small chlorotic area near
the midribs (mirid bugs).
ii. Faint yellow speckling on leaves – castor whitefly and coconut scale
iii. Silvering or whitening of leaf surface – (onion thrips)
iv. Hopper burn – paddy brown plant hopper, cotton leaf hopper.
v. Crinkling and curling of leaves (aphids, thrips, leaf hoppers)
vi. Distortion of foliage and clustering of terminal shoots (mealybugs)
vii. Premature shedding of fruits (San Jose scale on apple)
c. Boring – Feed by getting inside the plant tissue are called borers. They gain entrance to the plants by
having the egg thrust into the tissues by the sharp ovipositor or by eating their way on after they hatch
from eggs. Coleopteran (mango stem borer), Lepidoptera (paddy yellow stem borer) and dipterans
(sorghum shoot fly). Insect also bore fruits (brinjal fruit borer), seeds (pulse beetle) and grains (rice
weevil) and leaves (tomato leaf miner). They make galleries as they feed upon the internal tissues and
make the plant very weak
Paddy yellow stem borer, sorghum shoot fly, ragi pink borer, sugarcane early shoot borer attacks the
vegetative stage of the crop and produce dead heart. Paddy yellow stem borer in the panicle
emergence stage produce white ear symptom.
d. Gall making – gall midges and gall wasps induce plants to produce external outgrowth or tumours o
various shapes and size called galls. Grape phylloxera (vine insect) has destroyed thousands of acres
of the vineyards in Europe and America.
Mango gall midge produce round brown galls on mango leaves and the pungam leaves.
e. Root eating – sap suckers (apple wooly aphid), root borers (sugarcane white grub) attacks the
underground parts and often kills the whole plant.
f. Injury by egg laying – About 5 per cent of insect damage plants and trees by ovipositing into them.
Cicada female, deposits eggs in one year old fruit and forest trees by splitting wood so severly that the
entire twig dies. The tree hoppers and tree crickets ruin the bark or twigs of the hosts.
g. Injury by nest making – many insects remove plant parts for construction of nests. Leaf cutter bee
cuts a semicircular leaf part from the rose leaves and such thousands of leaves are cemented together
with their excreta to grow fungus for their young ones food.
h. Injury due to mutualism – Interspecific interaction wherein both the injects are benefitted. Ants and
ahpids living together. Aphids cause damage to plants.
i. Dissemination of plant disease – more then 200 plant diseases are transmitted by insects of which
150 are viral, 25 are fungal, 15 are bacterial and few protozozns.
Paddy – Rice tungro virus by green leaf hopper, bhendi vein clearing by whiteflies
V. PEST SURVEILLANCE AND FORECASTING
Pest surveillance is nothing but „periodical assessment of pests populations and their damage‟ or
„watch kept on a pest for the purpose of decision making in pest management‟.
Pest surveillance can provide the necessary information to determine the feasibility of a pest
control programme.
Pest surveillance comprises of three basic components
Determination of the level of incidence of pest species
Determination of what loss the incidence will cause and
Determination of economic benefits the control will provide.
Objectives of pest surveillance
To monitor the presence of a pest and
To determine the population density, dispersion, damage caused etc.
Survey :
Regular survey activity is necessary for successful surveillance programmes. An insect pest
survey is „a detailed collection of insect population information at a particular time in a given area‟. These
surveys are both qualitative and quantitative.
The qualitative surveys aim at the pest detection, employed with newly introduced pests and
often precedes quantitative survey.
The quantitative surveys attempt to define numerically the abundance of an insect population in
time and space. It is useful to predict future population trends and to assess damage potentials.
Indices in pest surveillance
Economic damage: is „the amount of injury, which justify the cost of artificial control measures‟.
Economic injury level: is defined, as the lowest number of insects that will cause economic damage „or‟
the cost of control measures is equal yield loss by insects‟.
Economic thresh hold level: It is „the level at which management action should be taken to prevent
population reaching EIL‟.

FORECASTING
It is „an advance knowledge of probable pest infestations (out breaks) in a crop for planning the
cropping pattern in such a way as to minimize the damage but also to get the best advantage of the pest
control measures‟ or „forewarning of the forthcoming infestations of pests‟.
Forecasts are being done based on population's studies, studies on the pest's life history and field
studies of the effect of climatic factors on the pest and its environment.
Forecasting service serves (I) to predict the forthcoming infestation level of the pest, which knowledge
in essential in justifying the use of control measures and (ii) to find out the critical stage at which the
applications of insecticides would afford maximum protection.
The forecasts may be of two types viz.,
(I) Short term forecasting (covers a particular season or two successive seasons and it is based on
simple sampling).
(II) Long term forecasting (covers large areas and it is based on possible effects of weather on the
insect abundance or by extrapolating from the present population density into the future).