2nd Place: Trends in Helicoverpa zea populations across a late-season trapping network in North Carolina, USA

Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is a major pest in field crops in the south-eastern United States. Seasonal H. zea abundance is often monitored using Hartstack pheromone traps adjacent to susceptible crops. Trapping efforts in North Carolina begin as early as mid-July to capture the second field-generation moth flight from maize into cotton.
In this study we explore the spatiotemporal abundance of H. zea in relation to the crop landscape in five counties in North Carolina. Twenty-one Hartstack traps were deployed to the same on-farm locations in 2020-2022. Moths were collected and counted weekly through the H. zea flight period.
We investigated differences in phenological data (e.g., week of moth flight, average cumulative degree days) from 2020-2022. We compared moth abundance at trap locations from all three years using linear mixed-effects models. Using publicly available geospatial landscape datasets (USGS Cropland Data Layer, 2020 and 2021), we measured crop composition within a 5-km area around each trap. We used the crop composition results to investigate the influence of crop type and area in the landscape on moth abundance at each trap location using linear mixed-effects models.
Here we present preliminary results from the first three years of a planned five year experiment that will inform an infestation risk model for H. zea in North Carolina.