Aerosol recycling & pest control – a match made in heaven?
Gary Okey, of US-based Recycle Aerosol, shares a case study on recycling a valuable microscopic miracle in behavioural pest control.
Sex pheromones have been commercially available for insect pest control for about 35 years. It has steadily gained acceptance due to continual improvements in application and management, as entomologists gain an increasing scientific understanding of this fascinating behavioural phenomenon.
The basis of this pest management strategy is the use of a pest species’ own sex pheromone to disrupt its sexual behaviour. Moths rely on sex pheromones to locate their reproductive mates. In fact, it requires only a few nanograms of the pheromone plume to allow the male to correctly navigate and fly to the calling female. The male adult moth’s sole purpose in life is to find a female and copulate. The female then lays eggs, and both moths die. All their feeding (on their favourite foliage) takes place earlier in their lifecycle, as caterpillars. In defence of the moths, although some species are destructive pests, in general they are ecologically essential to the planet, especially as pollinators and...
Sex pheromones have been commercially available for insect pest control for about 35 years. It has steadily gained acceptance due to continual improvements in application and management, as entomologists gain an increasing scientific understanding of this fascinating behavioural phenomenon.
The basis of this pest management strategy is the use of a pest species’ own sex pheromone to disrupt its sexual behaviour. Moths rely on sex pheromones to locate their reproductive mates. In fact, it requires only a few nanograms of the pheromone plume to allow the male to correctly navigate and fly to the calling female. The male adult moth’s sole purpose in life is to find a female and copulate. The female then lays eggs, and both moths die. All their feeding (on their favourite foliage) takes place earlier in their lifecycle, as caterpillars. In defence of the moths, although some species are destructive pests, in general they are ecologically essential to the planet, especially as pollinators and...
