Population control of the yellow-spined bamboo locust, Ceracris kiangsu, using urine-borne chemical baits in bamboo forest

Abstract

The yellow-spined bamboo locust, Ceracris kiangsu Tsai (Orthoptera: Oedipodidae), is a notoriou defoliator of bamboos in China. In commercial bamboo forests, spraying insecticides to contro C. kiangsu is neither convenient nor economic, therefore environmentally acceptable and cost-effec tive methods are needed. Ceracris kiangsu adults are known to aggregate and gnaw at human urine contaminated materials; NaCl is a strong phagostimulant and NH 4 HCO 3 is an attractant/arrestant In the present paper, we found that foam plastic containers containing a blend of 0.03% bisultap, 3% NaCl, 3% NH 4 HCO 3 , and 0.1% Triton X-100 (tetrad bait) had a powerful attracticidal effect an( could kill a great number of especially female C. kiangsu adults, comparable to those containing mixture of 0.03% bisultap and 5-day-incubated urine. In a field trial, the tetrad bait killed approxi mately 80% of females and about 9% of males in the treated plots after daily application for five con secutive days. The corrected average reduction rate was 48.2%. Moreover, the sex ratio was decreased from 1.18 before the trial to 0.25 after the experiment in the treated plots. These results indicated tha there is the potential to develop a trap using NaCl as a phagostimulant and NH 4 HCO 3 as an attractant that can be used for C. kiangsu control.