Relationships Between Environmental Factors and Capture Time of Male Pink Bollworm (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) Moths in Traps Baited with Sex Pheromone

Abstract

Peak capture time of male pink bollworm moths, Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders), was determined from 16 pheromone traps placed at the edges of several cotton fields and monitored at 45-min intervals on each of 42 nights during the cotton growing season from April through November 1990-1992 in California’s Palo Verde Valley. Peak time of capture correlated significantly with times of sunset, sunrise, and wind speeds falling below 2.68 m/s, minimum temperature of the same and previous nights, and maximum temperature. Stepwise and backwards elimination regressions were used to develop a model of predicted capture time, which showed that minimum night temperature, time when wind speed fell below 2.68 m/s, and moon age provided a good fit. By including minimum temperature in the model, time of sunset did not correlate significantly with capture time. Predicted peak capture time occurred 30 min later for each degree increase in minimum night temperature up to 20°C and was delayed by as much as 2 h by wind speeds above 2.68 m/s before 2100 hours and by 1 h during new moon compared with full moon.