Cong Lin, Milosavljević Ivan, Li Yehua, Yao Weixin, Hoddle Mark S
Department of Statistics, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.
Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.
J Econ Entomol. 2025 Feb 11;118(1):430-440. doi: 10.1093/jee/toae279.
Argentine ant, Linepithema humile (Mayr) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), is a pest in southern California citrus orchards because it protects honeydew-producing hemipteran pests from natural enemies. A major impediment to controlling L. humile is estimating ant densities in orchards. Ants use irrigation lines to travel across orchard floors to reach trees infested with hemipterans. However, for making ant control decisions, it is the number of ants in trees, not on pipes that is critical. Work completed here demonstrates that the number of ants counted on pipes is highly correlated with the number of ants counted on trunks. Densities of ants counted on trunks are correlated with trunk diameter, citrus variety, and time of year and time of day counts. Six regression models, linear regression, zero-inflated Poisson regression, and zero-inflated negative binomial regression models, and each of their mixed model extensions, indicated a strong positive relationship between ant counts on irrigation pipes and ant counts on tree trunks. Mean squared prediction error and 5-fold cross-validation analyses indicated that the best performing of these 6 models was the zero-inflated Poisson mixed regression model. A binary classification model developed using support vector machine learning for ant infestation severity levels, categorized as low (<100 ants counted in 1 min) or high (≥100 ants counted in minutes), predicted ant densities on trunks with 85% accuracy. These models can be used to estimate the number of ants on the trunks of citrus trees by using counts of ants made on irrigation pipes.
阿根廷蚁（Linepithema humile (Mayr)，膜翅目：蚁科）是南加州柑橘园的一种害虫，因为它会保护产生蜜露的半翅目害虫免受天敌侵害。控制阿根廷蚁的一个主要障碍是估计果园中的蚂蚁密度。蚂蚁利用灌溉管道在果园地面穿行，以到达被半翅目害虫侵害的树木。然而，对于做出蚂蚁控制决策而言，关键的是树上的蚂蚁数量，而非管道上的蚂蚁数量。此处完成的研究表明，在管道上计数的蚂蚁数量与在树干上计数的蚂蚁数量高度相关。在树干上计数的蚂蚁密度与树干直径、柑橘品种以及一年中的时间和一天中的计数时间相关。六个回归模型，即线性回归、零膨胀泊松回归和零膨胀负二项回归模型，以及它们各自的混合模型扩展，均表明灌溉管道上的蚂蚁计数与树干上的蚂蚁计数之间存在强正相关关系。均方预测误差和五折交叉验证分析表明，这六个模型中表现最佳的是零膨胀泊松混合回归模型。使用支持向量机学习开发的用于蚂蚁侵扰严重程度水平的二元分类模型，分为低（1分钟内计数<100只蚂蚁）或高（1分钟内计数≥100只蚂蚁），预测树干上蚂蚁密度的准确率为85%。这些模型可用于通过对灌溉管道上的蚂蚁计数来估计柑橘树干上的蚂蚁数量。
