More about pesky leafrollers
More about pesky leafrollers
I wrote about these little insects in March. A very clever entomologist, Nicola, has been studying these little critters. (I do hope she comes and shares some of her knowledge with us at school too in the future.)
Nicola works very hard in avo orchards during the summer months. She is trying to find a way to get rid of the leafrollers that is safe for humans so that the trees do not have to be sprayed with pesticide.
In the winter she looks at the female moths under a microscope to see if their eggs were fertilised which means male moths were in the orchard. She then has to enter a lot of data (numbers) into a computer so that she can make sense of how big the problem is or how effective the pheromone traps were.
A scientist's work never stops.
Jayde room 7 leafroaller life cycle Obliquebanded leafroller has two generations per year, overwintering as small larvae in the trees. The overwintering larvae become active when trees break dormancy, and they complete their development about 3 weeks after the apple blossom period. Adults begin to emerge in late May or early June. Females can lay up to 900 eggs during a 7- to 8-day oviposition period. Eggs hatch in about 10 to 12 days. This generation takes almost two months to complete development. Adult flight of the second generation occurs in August, and the larvae hatch in August and September. Young larvae construct hibernation sites on twigs or bark to spend the winter.
ReplyDeleteSo what is the life cycle, Jayde?
DeleteIf you read through this informations you would see that a MOTH lays EGGS and they hatch tiny CATERPILLARS which then turn into LARVAE and then a MOTH comes out. And the whole cycle starts again.
Wow! Very interesting.
ReplyDelete