Fall Armyworm Update
Nights are starting to cool off across Ohio, but we continue to monitor for FAW moths! We just completed our 19th week of monitoring moth pests in Ohio which ran from August 25th to August 31st. We are currently only monitoring FAW moths and over the past week we have had 13 counties participate in monitoring. The statewide average did increase to 14.0 moths per trap over the past week, but there has also been an increase in “imposters” in the traps. An imposter is when another moth, in this case a wainscot moth, is attracted to the trap and may skew the numbers. In Wayne and Van Wert counties, the majority of moths in the traps were Wainscot moths. To differentiate between wainscot moths and FAW moths you can look at the wings (Figure 1). Sometimes this is difficult because the wing patterns wear off with extended time in the traps, but the wing patterns are so different between these two, it makes it a bit easier. The image below is a comparison of the two moths. On the left is a Wainscot, which has a lighter wing color and less variation in color patterns. On the right is a FAW moth, which has a much darker forewing with more dark and light color variations. In summary, over the past week our monitoring network reported the highest moth average of 88 moths in Lucas Co, followed by 60 in Hancock. However, numbers are very wide spread with the majority of counties reporting low numbers, including zeros (Figure 2).
For more information on FAW biology and management, visit our factsheet at https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/ent-0093
Fall Armyworm Moth Map
Week #5
August 25th – August 31st
