Don't Spray Wasps! Using Polistes Paper Wasps for Pest Management in the Home Garden.

Presentation Type

Poster/Portfolio

Presenter Major(s)

Biology

Mentor Information

Michael Henshaw

Department

Biology

Location

Kirkhof Center KC19

Start Date

11-4-2012 9:00 AM

Keywords

Environment, Life Science

Abstract

Pest control poses a challenge to gardeners, especially those using organic practices. Polistes wasps are important predators of soft bodied pest insects, consuming 1000's per season. We investigated whether Polistes wasps were effective control agents in small organic gardens. We planted 8 garden plots with lettuce, cabbage, beans and tomatoes and established 8 Polistes dominulus nests in 4 of them. We did not observe any differences between the experimental and control plots in the abundance of pest insects, the extent of damage, or the weight of the plants at harvest. However, we did find that cabbage plants from plots with more wasps had less insect damage than plants from plots with fewer wasps. Although our study appears to demonstrate that Polistes wasps were not effective in controlling pests, the observation that wasp number influenced damage levels in cabbage suggests that, at least for that crop, there is a density of wasps that can be effective.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS
 
Apr 11th, 9:00 AM

Don't Spray Wasps! Using Polistes Paper Wasps for Pest Management in the Home Garden.

Kirkhof Center KC19

Pest control poses a challenge to gardeners, especially those using organic practices. Polistes wasps are important predators of soft bodied pest insects, consuming 1000's per season. We investigated whether Polistes wasps were effective control agents in small organic gardens. We planted 8 garden plots with lettuce, cabbage, beans and tomatoes and established 8 Polistes dominulus nests in 4 of them. We did not observe any differences between the experimental and control plots in the abundance of pest insects, the extent of damage, or the weight of the plants at harvest. However, we did find that cabbage plants from plots with more wasps had less insect damage than plants from plots with fewer wasps. Although our study appears to demonstrate that Polistes wasps were not effective in controlling pests, the observation that wasp number influenced damage levels in cabbage suggests that, at least for that crop, there is a density of wasps that can be effective.