Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 13, 2025
Using Flight Mills to Measure Flight Propensity and Performance of Western Corn Rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte
Published on: October 29, 2019
Automatic Field Detection of Western Corn Rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera; Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) with a
Zsolt Tóth1, Miklós Tóth2, Júlia Katalin Jósvai2
1Institute for Soil Sciences and Agricultural Chemistry, Centre for Agricultural Research, Herman Ottó út 15, H-1022 Budapest, Hungary.
Abstract:
The Western corn rootworm (WCR), Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), is a significant invasive pest of maize plantations in Europe. Integrated pest management demands an adequate monitoring system which detects the activity of insects with high accuracy in real-time. In this study, we show and test a new electronic device (ZooLog KLP), which was developed to detect WCR in the field. The ZooLog KLP consists of a trapping element that attracts insects with its color and species-specific sex pheromone. The other part is an opto-electronic sensor-ring which detects the specimens when they fall into the trap. At detection, the time of catch is recorded and sent to a web interface. In this study, we followed WCR flight patterns for six weeks in two locations, using ZooLog KLP probes. We investigated sensor precision by comparing the number of catches to the number of detections. The tool reached high accuracy (95.84%) in recording WCR. We found a peak in flight activity in August and a bimodal daily pattern. This method may be beneficial in detecting the WCR during their activity, and this new device may serve as a prototype for real-time monitoring systems and improve the management of this pest.
