Potential Application of Pheromones in Monitoring, Mating Disruption, and Control of Click Beetles (Coleoptera: Elateridae)

Wireworms, the larvae stage of click beetles (family, Elateridae), are serious soil dwelling pests of small grain, corn, sugar beet, and potato crops globally. Since the 1950s, conventional insecticides such as lindane provided effective and inexpensive protection from wireworms, and little integrated pest management research (IPM) was conducted. The removal of these products from the agricultural market, particularly Lindane, has resulted in increasing levels of wireworm damage to small grain, corn, and potato crops. The wireworm damage has become an increasing problem for growers, so the demand for a meaningful risk assessment and useful methods to restrict damage is increasing. However, due to the cryptic habitat of the wireworms, pest control is very difficult and leads to unsatisfying results. The prospective appropriateness of sex pheromone traps for employing management strategies against wireworm’s populations was first suggested with experimentation in Hungary and Italy. Simultaneously, considerable work has been done on the identification and use of pheromone traps to monitor population of click beetles. The work has been mostly done in European and former Soviet Union countries. For this paper, we reviewed what work has been done in monitoring the click beetle which was considered as pests and how the pheromones can be used in IPM to monitor and control wireworms/click beetles. Also, the possibilities of using the pheromone-baited traps for mating disruption and control tested in the fields were summarized. 1. Introduction Wireworms are the larval forms of click beetles (Coleoptera: Elateridae), inflicting damage to many important crops around the world, primarily through the subterranean feeding of plant roots and tubers [1]. Wireworms, the larval stage of click beetles, are serious soil dwelling pests of small grain, corn, sugar beet, and potato crops globally [2]. About 9,300 species of click beetles have been described worldwide [3]. In North America, 885 species in 60 genera have been identified [4]. These species are well known as widely distributed agricultural and horticultural pests [5]. Many of these species have affected crop industry and ranked among the most important soil dwelling agricultural pests worldwide [6]. Usually, economic damage to the field crops caused by wireworms is rare. However, the population of click beetle larvae can reach numbers high enough to cause economic damage [7]. During larval stage, which may extend over 5 years, these larvae feed on decaying matters or feed on root of crops such as wheat and rye