Responses of Red Flour Beetle Adults, (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), and Other Stored Product Beetles to Different Pheromone Trap Designs.

A series of laboratory and field experiments were performed to assess the responses of (Herbst) and other stored-product beetles to pheromone-baited traps and trap components. A commercial pitfall trap called the Flit-Trak M, the predecessor to the Dome trap, was superior in both laboratory and field experiments over the other floor trap designs assessed at capturing walking . In field experiments, (L.) and (Stephens) both preferred a sticky trap to the pitfall trap. Although the covered trap is effective at capturing several other species of stored product beetles, the synthetic aggregation pheromone lure is critical for the pitfall trap's efficacy for . Although the food-based trapping oil used in the pitfall trap was not found to be attractive to when assayed alone, it had value as an enhancer of the pheromone bait when the two were used together in the trap. A dust cover modification made to go over the pitfall trap was effective in protecting the trap from dust, although the trap was still vulnerable to dust contamination from sanitation techniques that used compressed air to blow down the mill floors. Capture of in the modified trap performed as well as the standard trap design in a non-dusty area of a flour mill, and was significantly superior over the standard trap in a dusty area. responded in flight outside a flourmill preferentially to multiple funnel traps with pheromone lures compared to traps without pheromone.