Developing a Degree-Day Model to Predict Billbug (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) Seasonal Activity in Utah and Idaho Turfgrass

Abstract

Billbugs are native pests of turfgrass throughout North America, primarily managed with preventive, calendar-based insecticide applications. An existing degree-day model (lower development threshold of 10°C, biofix 1 March) developed in the eastern United States for bluegrass billbug, Sphenophorus parvulus (Gyllenhal; Coleoptera: Curculionidae), may not accurately predict adult billbug activity in the western United States, where billbugs occur as a species complex. The objectives of this study were 1) to track billbug phenology and species composition in managed Utah and Idaho turfgrass and 2) to evaluate model parameters that best predict billbug activity, including those of the existing bluegrass billbug model. Tracking billbugs with linear pitfall traps at two sites each in Utah and Idaho, we confirmed a complex of three univoltine species damaging turfgrass consisting of (in descending order of abundance) bluegrass billbug, hunting billbug (Sphenophorus venatus vestitus Chittenden; Coleoptera: Curculionidae), and Rocky Mountain billbug (Sphenophorus cicatristriatus Fabraeus; Coleoptera: Curculionidae). This complex was active from February through mid-October, with peak activity in mid-June. Based on linear regression analysis, we found that the existing bluegrass billbug model was not robust in predicting billbug activity in Utah and Idaho. Instead, the model that best predicts adult activity of the billbug complex accumulates degree-days above 3°C after 13 January. This model predicts adult activity levels important for management within 11 d of observed activity at 77% of sites. In conjunction with outreach and cooperative networking, this predictive degree-day model may assist end users to better time monitoring efforts and insecticide applications against billbug pests in Utah and Idaho by predicting adult activity.

Keywords: Rocky Mountain billbug; bluegrass billbug; hunting billbug; integrated pest management; phenology.