New dispenser types for integrated pest management of agriculturally significant insect pests: an algorithm with...

Pheromone effects discovered some 130 years, but scientifically defined just half a century ago, are a great bonus for basic and applied biology. Specifically, pest management efforts have been advanced in many insect orders, either for purposes or monitoring, mass trapping, or for mating disruption. Finding and applying a new search algorithm, nearly 20,000 entries in the pheromone literature have been counted, a number much higher than originally anticipated. This compilation contains identified and thus synthesizable structures for all major orders of insects. Among them are hundreds of agriculturally significant insect pests whose aggregated damages and costly control measures range in the multibillions of dollars annually. Unfortunately, and despite a lot of effort within the international entomological scene, the number of efficient and cheap engineering solutions for dispensing pheromones under variable field conditions is uncomfortably lagging behind. Some innovative approaches are cited from the relevant literature in an attempt to rectify this situation. Recently, specifically designed electrospun organic nanofibers offer a lot of promise. With their use, the mating communication of vineyard insects like Lobesia botrana (Lep.: Tortricidae) can be disrupted for periods of seven weeks.