IPM Fall 2010

If I were to drop one webtool I would drop Twitter. I like the concept (using it in the field), but I don't think it is necessary to use it in this class. Also, I'm not sure if I agree with using Twitter as a way to communicate with the professor (i.e. asking questions). I just think that person to person communication is an important quality to have and learn and twitter masks that. It sounds funny, but I often feel like people hide behind web-based tools which may hurt them in the future when it is necessary to be able to communicate with others (i.e. in a "real" job).

I will definitely use more web-based tools in the future, I think netvibes, the blog books, and wetpaint are an easy way to keep track of things (and so are some of the other tools you have introduced - wiggio, doodle, etc. that you didn't discuss in class).

Some things I would have done differently: focus more on the objective of the class. Learning more of the cropping systems and becoming familiar with what damage looks like and the insects you encounter. I would have liked to go into more depth in those areas, and I think the case study is a great idea. A semester is a short period of time to get everything into this class which is why I think it should have been more focused on the crops, insects, and management tools, more specific things.

Private industry vs. academia

This week in lab we reviewed the article "Under wraps" by Emily Waltz. The article discussed the battle between private industry and academia regarding research on biotechnology (genetically modified crops). The issue is that the companies with the technology, such as Monsanto, Pioneer, and Syngenta, do not allow outside researches to run experiments on their products unless the research is approved by the company. Millions of dollars is spent on constructing these products and these companies want to protect their investments. The last thing they want is some researcher coming in doing a faulty experiment and ruining everything.

In my opinion the companies are in control. I am a little biased though because I am a researcher. I feel that if the product is worth all of the money they put in to it, and it is a good as they say it is, then anyone should be allowed to research it. I think that the public has the right to know the type of information that people are trying to research- such insect resistance, health issues, and impact on beneficials. These topics aren't little topics that can be ignored and swept under the carpet, which it seems like the companies are attempting to do. I think what really got to me was the accusation that researcher are "blowing this out of proportion." If there was nothing to hide, then why is it such an issue to be allowed to further research these products. Another point in the article that made me really feel like the companies are at fault was with the test regarding lady beetles. When the researchers found extremely negative information pertaining to the crops impact of lady beetles, the information was not allowed to be publicized. Then the company, took it among themselves to retest the impact, when clearly they manipulated the methods to allow positive outcomes, avoiding certain aspects (such as legth of time the insects were observed). I feel that researchers, typically approach situations with an unbiased opinion, and I don't feel like the researchers are in any way trying to hurt the companies, they are just trying to provide critical information that may serverly impact our food industry, whether it be negative or positive.

With that being said I feel like there needs to be an outside regulator, such as the government. There needs to be a third party that is educated on this topic to determine which research is suitable, and necessary. In regards to growers being provided with disclaimers, I feel like they should. I feel like if they want to ignore information, then they can, but they should be provided with all of the information pertaining to the product they are investing in including performance data and testing information. To answer the question when should biotechnology be used on the farm, I feel like it should be used once appropriate research can be provided. I feel this way because even if humans aren't directly consuming the product, we are still using it to feed live stock, which humans then eat. How long could this take? Years, but I would rather wait it out and know that a product is safe than use one that will in the long run cause harm (I know that comapanies invest million- probably billions of dollars into these products, and that is why they have a different outlook). Biotechnology now looks like it may lead to increased food security, but what if insects become resistant to these products and backlash and destroy more than 40% of our food? Or what if we have to pay a huge expense, such as our health or harm to beneficial insects just to have that increased food security- in such instances I personally don't think it's worth it.

To conclude, I'm not against biotechnology of crops, I think they could be a good thing. However, I feel like certain research should be allowed on these products regardless of how much companies invested in them. I just think that the long term harm may not be worth it and we won't know the potential of that harm until the products can be researched.

Biological Control

This week in lab we observed ladybeetles (Coccinellidae) and their predatory behavior towards aphids (Aphididae). In this particular lab we only observed the functional response of one lady bug at a time. First we observed individually, looking at a petri dish containing a leaf with aphids on it and one ladybeetle. We had to note the number of feedings our ladybeetle did and for how long. Each feeing was noted as an event. Our second task was in groups of four we placed one infested leaf and one uninfested leaf in a box with a glass cover. Then we placed a ladybeetle in and traced its path while timing each action (walking, grooming, resting, feeding). We observed one ladybeetle for five minutes and then repeated the experiment with a second ladybeetle. For both experiments the ladybeetles were starved for one day.

Part 1. 
A functional response has to do with an individual and their behavior, change in response. Type II functional response as the predator increases, the prey attacked also increases until a point where it levels off and plateaus. This point is known as satiation- or the individuals become full. This happens because consumption at some because the number of attacked will remain constant, even as the number of prey increased. Variables that determine the level of the plateau is the carrying capactity. Other factors would be the density of the prey and predators, space, and environmental conditions.


For experiment 1, with the individual ladybeetle observed under a microscope, I observed six events. I classified each event as when the ladybeetle first picked up the aphid to begin feeding. I ended each event when either the aphid was fully eaten or in a couple of cases the ladybeetle "spit" out the aphid after chewing on it until the aphid was dead. Below are my results, the time was recorded in seconds. The feeding behavior of my ladybeetle was interesting, it would eat one really fast and then it seemed to take its time with the next, and then eat another one really fast. It only ate apterous adult aphids as well.

Experiment 1
Event #	Feeding duration (seconds)
1	21
2	144
3	4
4	242
5	284
6	31

The mean feeding duration for the ladybeetle was 121 seconds, and the standard error was 49.5. These results do not compare very closely to the table in the lab handout for a couple of reasons, the first being that the insects in the handout table too much longer than the ladybeetles to have one event (the time was measured in hour compared to seconds) Also, the insect in the table went after all life stages while the ladybeetle I observed only appeared to be going after adults. A lot of the time for my ladybeetle was spent either eating, walking or grooming. Grooming is particularly important to insects to avoid diseases.

I really enjoyed this experiment because I have never seen ladybeetles under a microscope eating aphids. I was surprised by how long sometimes my ladybeetle just sat there with an aphid in it's mouth not eating, it just looked like it was holding it. I think that ladybeetles would be a good biological control agent in the field, but aphids outnumber them by a lot. So since this ladybeetle was starved for a day, and only ate six aphids in the 30 minutes I observed it, you would need A LOT of ladybeetles to mitigate an aphid population.



Part 2.

My group consisted of myself, Denae, German, and Matt. My job was to trace where the ladybeetle went on the glass. The results of the experiment are below.

Experiment 2
Beetle #	Action	Duration (seconds)
1	walking	62
1	walking	18
1	walking	41
1	walking	6
1	grooming	64
1	grooming	7
1	grooming	24
1	grooming	29
1	resting	34
1	resting	15
1	feeding	0
2	walking	51
2	walking	31
2	walking	4
2	walking	7
2	walking	21
2	walking	7
2	grooming	9
2	grooming	12
2	grooming	22
2	grooming	26
2	grooming	92
2	resting	18
2	feeding	0

On average the beetles spent the following:
24.8 seconds walking with standard error 6.54
31.6 seconds grooming with standard error 9.41
22.33 seconds resting with standard error 5.89
no time grooming










Ladybeetle #1 was a male and ladybeetle #2 was a female. Both of the ladybeetles had random paths. They both wandered around the center a bit but stayed on the sides (see pictures above). Neither of the ladybeetles found the aphids to feed on, however, they both did walk right by them. I did find this surprising after knowing that they hadn't eaten for a day.

I think this experiment showed just how difficult this would be to use in the field because if they beetles couldn't find the aphids as food in a small box, they might be more difficult in nature to find. These results were also not very comparable to the table given to us being that the ladybeetles never found the aphids, so it is hard to compare.

Estimating damage

Part I

In this weeks lab we had to estimate damage on corn, soybean, and sorghum.

In the corn the damage looked like both fungal and feeding damage. The feeding damage looks like it could have occurred from some type of caterpillar, or another insect with chewing mouth parts. The corn stalk had borer holes in it which leads me to think that it may be a corn ear worm.

The soybean leaves looked like they had insect damage from an insect with chewing mouth parts. Some of the feeding occurred in the middle of the leaves and some of the feeding damage was all around the leaves. Some insects that may feed on soybean may be corn earworm or armyworm.

The sorghum damage looked like it was caused by an insect with chewing mouth parts such as a corn earworm or an armyworm. The damage may have also been caused by another type of pest - - a bird!

The sampling unit for corn was an ear of corn and the sample size was 30. For soybean the unit was one soybean leaf and the sample size was 50 leaves. The sorghum sampling unit was one head, and the sampling size was 30 heads. To estimate the damage for each of these systems I attempted to imagine all of the damage put together, then I tried to decide if I thought that all of the damage took up more or less than 50% of the sampling unit, and I went from there.  I used this strategies for all three of the sampling systems. I have never attempted to estimate damage, so this was a bit difficult for me to see. 


According the Flint and Gouveia the definition of absolute samples are samples that count every individual in a population in a given area and relative samples are sampling methods that provide an unbiased estimate of the population, with every sample unit having an equal chance of selection (2001). Therefore, according to these definitions the sampling we did by estimating damage is relative. This is because we selected leaves from a population - each leaf had an equal chance of selection, it did not include every individual in the population. 


Part II
Next, each sampling unit was looked at closer and the percent loss was determined. I did not estimate very well for any of the samples (sorghum, soybean, or corn). I did the best job at estimating sorghum damage (out of the three this was the crop that I was most accurate with)- it was the only group that i had a R2 above .5. I think the hard part of estimating sorghum damage was that the size of the sorghum heads varied so much, what might have been 5% damage on one, could have been 25% damage on a smaller one. 

The Next was soybean leaves. My estimations for soybean damage were all over the place, not very accurate or precise at all. I think the difficulty here was that I tended to over estimate damage. I was looking for any little sign that would have counted towards damage.

Finally with corn I did the worst job estimating. My R2 value was only a .3 which is not very good. Again all of my points are scattered. I think the hardest part about estimating with the corn was that I didn't exactly know what damage could have been defined by. I just counted areas on the ear that were covered with a fungal disease or had obvious insect damage. I didn't think to count areas that were missing kernels all together from other problems other than insect damage. However, after reviewing the results from the rest of the class, it doesn't look like I did that bad at estimating the corn damage in comparison. 

When compared to the class I think I did average on estimating sorghum and corn, and below average estimating  soybean. I overestimated in corn, soybean, and sorghum. Based on R2 values and y intercepts, I think that Hedlund had the best estimations for corn, McCartney for soybeans, and then Patterson for sorghum. 


Looking back on the lab- it initially seemed easy, but there are many of things I would have done differently a second time around. For instance, I did not think to look for insect frass - this is a good indication of what may be causing the damage. Another thing I did not take very well into account was the size of each sampling unit. This can make it difficult to estimate damage- if you look at a large sorghum head, next to a small sorghum head. Regardless, I'm sure it takes time to become good at estimating damage. To accurately estimate damage, it would be nice to use the computer programs that were used to estimate the damage; but right now technology is not up to date enough to make this possible. For now, you have to hope that you have a good scout that is a much better damage estimator than I am!

Insect structures: what's in the bag?

Insect structures: what’s in the bag?
The purpose of this week’s lab was to be able to sort through samples from sorghum and soybean fields in the area and sort out the insects. We had to sort the insects by mouth parts because mouthparts are a main diagnostic key when identifying insect pest damage.

The first bag I sorted was sampled from soybean field in Manhattan, KS. In this bag I sorted out 27 insects; 88% of the insects had chewing mouth parts, 7% had piercing-sucking mouth parts, and 3% had siphoning mouth parts. The piecing-sucking insects were both stinkbugs, and the insect with siphoning mouth parts was a moth. The insects with chewing mouth parts were broken down into the following groups: 58% green beetle, 17% caterpillars, 17% green field crickets, and 8% green lacewing. The orders in the soybean field were: Lepidoptera, Hemiptera: Pentatomidae, Coleoptera, and Neuroptera: Chrysopidae, and Orthoptera: Gryllidae.

The second bag I sorted through was sampled from a sorghum field in Manhattan, KS. This bag had 20 insects; 90% had chewing mouth parts and 10% had piercing-sucking mouth parts. Again the piecing sucking insects were green stinkbugs. As for the insects with chewing mouth parts 78% of the insects were caterpillars, 11% were green beetles, 5% were green field crickets, and 5% were green lacewings. The orders in the soybean field were the same as the orders in the soybean field.

After the insects were sorted through I picked a green lacewing from the soybean field to look at under the Dino-Lite microscope. I picked this insect because I knew it was a beneficial insect; however, I have never taken the time to really look at it up close. Green lacewings belong to the order Neuroptera and family Chrysopidae. The larvae are typically predaceous and feed on aphids, while the adults may be predaceous, feed on pollen, or feed on honeydew. The eggs are laid on a thin stalk, with the the egg attached to the end. The larvae pupate in cocoons attached to the underside of leaves, and adults overwinter in the forest (Triplehorn and Johnson 2005). The picture below shows the green lacewing’s external anatomy. Green lacewings have a prognathous head orientation, with filiform (thread-like) antennae. These insects move around with their wings, and legs.

There were a couple of difficult parts in the lab for me. The first difficulty came when sorting. There were not enough forceps for the whole class so we had to use big green plastic ones. This made it difficult to grab the insects without smashing them. Another difficulty was with the microscope. It took a good picture, but I didn’t know I could get closer to it. For instance, I would have liked to zoom in so that I could have gotten a better view of the chewing mouth parts. This picture does not make it easy to distinguish individual mouth structures. The third difficulty was realizing that I didn’t know anything about insect larvae! I’m looking forward to being able to identify all the insect larvae that were in the bag.

Using this type of identification method in the field would be difficult. You would need to set up the computer and microscope, which depending on where you are may be an issue. Another difficulty of using this method in the field would be that it would be hard to observe the insect under the microscope if it was still alive. I would suggest bringing a kill jar out to the field with you so you don’t have to worry about the insect flying or crawling away.

My first blog...

:)