Spatial Relationships of Plant Bugs in Large Scale Cotton Operations: Do Edge and Ecotone Matter?

After the success of Boll Weevil eradication in cotton, a new series of cotton pests have begun to emerge over the past few years. These secondary pests used to be managed by the wide spread use of insecticides to control the Boll Weevil, but with the development of BT cotton there has been a decrease in insecticide use and an increase in these so called secondary pests. These pests include: Cotton Flea Hopper, a couple different species of stink bugs, and the Verde Plant bug. They are all ‘sucking’ bugs which means they suck plant nutrients. They tend to feed on the early boll stages in cotton development. Feeding during these stages can cause severe damage to the final cotton yield as well as introduce cotton boll rot. The issues with managing these pests are that outbreaks vary from year to year and their density varies from field to field. The goal of this study is to investigate the spatial relationships with these pest population to get a better understanding on why some of these pests are present is some areas and not present in others. Field edge will be examined to assess whether these insects prefer to feed near edges versus uniformity in the field. Ecotones which are the transition areas between two different habitat types are also examined to get a sense of how the layout of the south Texas agroecosystem plays on populations of these pests. In this case the habitat types will include different crops, bare ground and natural vegetation.