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Q&A

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Poster

P-IE: Biocontrol - Parasitoids and Predators On-Demand Posters

Impacts of ground cover management on natural enemy communities in Georgia peach orchards

On-Demand Poster

    Presenting Author(s)

  • DO

    Daniel O'Connell

    Graduate Student
    University of Georgia
    Athens, Georgia, United States

    • Co-Author(s)

  • Brett R. Blaauw

    Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist
    University of Georgia
    Athens, Georgia, United States

  • Jason M. Schmidt

    Associate Professor
    University of Georgia
    Tifton, Georgia, United States

In the Southeastern United States, peaches face pest pressure from a variety of catfacing insects, including the invasive brown marmorated stink bug / BMSB (Halyomorpha halys). BMSB has previously caused severe economic damage to tree fruit in the mid-Atlantic region and is becoming a more severe pest in the Southeast. Sufficient control of BMSB currently requires pesticides to be applied at an unsustainable frequency, meaning that it is important to identify new methods to manage BMSB in agricultural settings. Because BMSB nymphs disperse between host plants by walking, they may be susceptible to predation by natural enemies. However, little is currently known about ground-dwelling natural enemy communities in Southeastern peach orchards. Additionally, peaches in the Southeast are grown under different management conditions, including different kinds of ground cover, which may influence natural enemy communities. During the 2020 growing season, we assessed the effect of ground cover management on ground-dwelling natural enemy communities in a Georgia peach orchard using pitfall traps to collect ground-dwelling arthropods over the course of 3 months in experimental plots consisting of bare dirt, mowed vegetation, or unmowed vegetation. The four most abundant taxa in our study were Formicidae, Lycosidae, Carabidae, and Gnaphosidae. Of these taxa, only Lycosidae and Carabidae were significantly affected by ground cover treatment and time. Lycosidae were more common in mowed and unmowed plots earlier in the season, whereas Carabidae were more common in bare ground during the late season. The results of this experiment and future directions of our project are discussed.