Surveillance for detection of the brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys, is reliant on sticky panels with aggregation pheromone, which are low cost, but very inefficient (est. 3%). Trapping for adults was conducted in Italy with novel live (or lethal) traps consisting of aggregation pheromone-baited cylinders with a wind vane, with the upwind end covered by mesh and the downwind end sealed by a removable entry-only mesh cone, admitting the attracted bugs. The novel traps caught up to 15-times more adult H. halys than identically-baited sticky panels in two weeks of daily checking (n = 6 replicates) (the new live traps were, in Run 1, 5-, 9-, 15-, 13-, 4-, 12-, 2-fold; and in Run 2, 7-, 1-, 3-, 7-, 6-, 6-, and 5-fold better than sticky traps, daily). The maximum catch of the new traps was 96 live adults in one trap in 24 h and the average improvement was ~7-fold compared with sticky panels. The rotating live traps, which exploit a mesh funnel facing the plume downwind that proved useful for collecting adults, could also be used to kill bugs. We expect that commercially-available traps could replace the crude prototypes we constructed quickly from local materials, at low cost, as long as the principles of a suitable plume structure were observed, as we discuss. The traps could be useful for the sterile insect technique, supporting rearing colonies, or to kill bugs.
Keywords: Halyomorpha halys; aggregation pheromone; lure and kill; sterile insect technique; trap; wild harvest.