Population control of the yellow-spined bamboo locust, Ceracris kiangsu, using urine-borne chemical baits in bamboo forest.

The yellow-spined bamboo locust, Ceracris kiangsu Tsai (Orthoptera: Oedipodidae), is a notorious defoliator of bamboos in China. In commercial bamboo forests, spraying insecticides to control C. kiangsu is neither convenient nor economic, therefore environmentally acceptable and cost-effective methods are needed. Ceracris kiangsu adults are known to aggregate and gnaw at human urine-contaminated materials; NaCl is a strong phagostimulant and NHHCO is an attractant/arrestant. In the present paper, we found that foam plastic containers containing a blend of 0.03% bisultap, 3% NaCl, 3% NHHCO, and 0.1% Triton X-100 (tetrad bait) had a powerful attracticidal effect and could kill a great number of especially female C. kiangsu adults, comparable to those containing a mixture of 0.03% bisultap and 5-day-incubated urine. In a field trial, the tetrad bait killed approximately 80% of females and about 9% of males in the treated plots after daily application for five consecutive days. The corrected average reduction rate was 48.2%. Moreover, the sex ratio was decreased from 1.18 before the trial to 0.25 after the experiment in the treated plots. These results indicated that there is the potential to develop a trap using NaCl as a phagostimulant and NHHCO as an attractant that can be used for C. kiangsu control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]