BEHAVIORAL CONTROL

Behavioral Control
• Dispense a large amount of sex pheromone within the crop.
• Disturb the normal behavior of male insects so that they
cannot find female hence interfering with mating.
• Utilize some chemicals to modify insect pest behavior, and
control pest without the use of toxins, thereby playing an important
role in area-wide control system.
• At present, behavioral modification method e.g (pheromones)
have been used to confuse or trap the male population.
• through the use of PHEROMONES AND HORMONES
PHEROMONES
• are chemicals released by an organism into its
environment enabling it to communicate with other
members of its own species.
• Pherein’ means to carry or transfer.
• Also called as ectohormones.
• Volatile in nature serving as chemical means of
communication.
1. Monitoring with Attractant
– Bait is an important component of pest management
program.
– Pheromones are widely used in pest monitoring due to the
specificity, selectivity and mainly for not affecting the
health of workers and environment.
– Food attractant can also be used for monitoring pest.
– In horticulture, the technique is widely used to monitor fruit
flies. In this case, Food baits are used in traps to attract
insects and pest.
2. Mating Disruption
– This method consist of distributing a large
amount of synthetic sex pheromones in the
field, aiming to prevent the male to find a
female, disrupting mating.
– Therefore, preventing new pest generations
from establishing in treated area.
– An ant lay a trail pheromone to direct other
ants to a food source. Aphids release an alarm
pheromones that warns other aphids of
potential danger, usually the presence of a
predator or parasites.
3. Attract and Kill ( A&K) System
• This strategy is a new pest management technique, an
extension of mating disruption, which is characterized by
the inclusion of and insecticide (killing agent) in
addition to the pheromone to achieve the same control
methods as mating disruptions.
• Attract and kill system effective against Alfalfa Looper.
• Starve alfalfa looper adults (moths) were strongly
attracted to the attract and kill station in a flight tunnel,
and 90.9 % of female moths and 87.6 % of male moths
that contracted the station died.
4. The Push-Pull Strategy.
– “Push-Pull”, also called stimulo-deterrent diversion
involves “pushing” the insects away from the
harvestable, economically important crops, and “pull”
onto a trap crop where their population is reduced by
biological control agent & specific but slow-acting
insecticide.
– Used for controlling agricultural pest by using repellant
“push” plants and trap “pull” plants.
– Cereal crops like maize or sorghum are often infested
by stem borers.
– Grasses planted around the perimeter of the crop
attract and trap the pest.
• The benefits of push-pull strategy include a lower
requirement for broad spectrum pesticides, saving
these valueable materials for a “ fire fighting role”.
• There is less risk of producing population resistant
insect.
5. Mass Trapping
– The purpose is to reduce the number of
individuals of the next generation removing
only male insect in the area.
– Mass trapping can be used in combination with
other methods of pest control within the
philosophy of integrated pest management.
– The adult phase of thrips and whiteflies can be
caught in huge numbers with sticky.raps.
6. Attractive Lures and Toxic Lures
– Another aspect of behavioral control is used of
secondary plant substances. They play an
important role in the feeding of monophagous or
oliphagous insects.
– These substances are used in insect behavioral
and biology studies, such as
attraction/repellence, feeding and oviposition
deterrence.
– Initial control of flies in Africa used odor released
by oven or buffalo urine to attract flies to cloth.
Dropped with insecticides.
– Later, flies were attracted to electricified nets with
these and other odorants.
– An alternative to conventional insecticides could make
use of insect pathogens as bio- pesticides if they can
kill the attracted insect before mating occurs.
ADVANTAGES of USING PHEROMONE
• Effective in minute quantities.
• Highly species specific.
• Biodegradable, Non-persistent and non-polluting.
• Non toxic to man, animals and plants.
• Affects many aspects of insect development and
physiology.
• Labour saving.
• Easy monitoring of pest population.
• Best suited in IPM
• Reduces risk of insecticide residues
HORMONES
• “Hormones are the secretion of internal ductless
glands, which regulate the growth and
development of the insect”
• Means to ‘excite’
• Connection link between nervous system and
endocrine system.
• Pesticides developed using this technology is as
‘third generation pesticides'.
• Principle of control Stefan Kopec (1917,22) reported,
brain of larva of gypsy moth Lymantria dispar produces a
hormone which induces pupation.
• Hormone is chemical signal sent from cells in one part to
cells in another parts of same individual.
• Regarded as chemical messengers.
• Their effect may be stimulatory or inhibitory.
Types of hormones
A) Neurohormones C) Ecdysone or moulting
-Prothoracicotropic hormone hormone
-Eclosion hormone D) Gonadal hormones
-Allatotropin -Ovarian steroid hormone
-Proctolin -Testies steroid hormones
-Allatostatin -Ecdysteroids in egg and embryo
-Diapause hormones
-Bursicon
-Diuretic hormones
B) Juvenile hormones
-Juvenoids or Juvenile hormones analogues
-Anti- juvenile hormones
Pest management by Juvenoids

They cause mortality in insect-pest by