Mini-Aspirator: A New Device for Collection and Transfer of Small Arthropods to Plants

Abstract

The process of collecting and/or infesting plants with a designated number of small arthropods in biological experiments is tedious and laborious. We developed a modified mini-aspirator, powered with a vacuum pump and fitted with a specially adapted (removable) collection vial to reduce the handling effort. The efficiency of the mini-aspirator was tested with the chilli thrips, Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood (Thysanoptera: Thripidae), a predatory mite, Amblyseius (= Neoseiulus) cucumeris (Oudemans) (Acari: Phytoseiidae), and the insidious flower bug, Orius insidiosus (Say) (Heteroptera: Anthocoridae). Using the mini-aspirator, operators collected 10 A. cucumeris mites and 10 S. dorsalis thrips and transferred them onto pepper plants in 43 s and 37 s, respectively, compared with 639 and 229 s, respectively, using a camel's hair brush as a conventional method. The use of the mini-aspirator for collecting A. cucumeris predatory mites and S. dorsalis thrips and infesting pepper plants with them represents a 15-fold and 6-fold time saving, respectively. Collection of 10 O. insidiosus flower bugs took 20 s with the mini-aspirator compared with 30 s when an unmodified aspirator was used. Proportionally, the amount of time saved with the mini-aspirator for the handling of O. insidiosus flower bugs was minimal compared with the timesavings when handling S. dorsalis thrips and the A. cucumeris predatory mites with the mini-aspirator. Additionally, the mini-aspirator can be fitted with a battery-powered Mini-Vac, which makes it portable for field applications, such as in sampling field populations when screening for pesticide resistant individuals.