Cotton Bollworm Moth

Fascinating facts about the Cotton Bollworm Moth

• A single cotton bollworm can grow to a moth with a 1¼-to-1½-inch wingspan, yet the whole life can finish in just over a month. The female cotton bollworm can lay several hundred eggs, distributed on various parts of the plant. Under favourable conditions, the eggs can hatch into larvae within three days and the whole lifecycle can be completed in just over a month. The larvae take 13 to 22 days to develop, reaching up to 40 millimetres (1+1⁄2 in) long in the sixth instar.
• The cotton bollworm's larvae are true generalists, feeding on more than 120 plant species in Russia and adjacent countries, and on key crops such as tomato, cotton, chickpea, rice, sorghum and cowpea across its range. In Russia and adjacent countries, the larvae populate more than 120 plant species, favouring Solanum, Datura, Hyoscyamus, Atriplex, and Amaranthus genera.
• Economic damage thresholds are startlingly low: just three to five larvae per hundred long-staple cotton plants, or eight to twelve per hundred medium-staple plants, can tip a crop into loss. The greatest damage is caused to cotton, tomatoes, maize, chick peas, alfalfa, and tobacco. The economic threshold of harmfulness in central Asia is three to five larvae per hundred plants of long-staple cotton and eight to twelve larvae per hundred plants on medium-staple cotton. Knowing these numbers lets growers set precise scouting targets before yields slip.
• H. armigera populations already had widespread resistance to the Bt toxins Cry1Ab, Cry1Ac, Cry2Ab, and Vip3A before the multiple recent invasions of South America. This pre-existing resistance pushes growers toward integrated tactics like pheromone traps, trap crops, and biological control.
• Scientists are racing to turn a virus that only infects insects into a bio-insecticide, a process projected to take about four years. The research team plans a two-year first stage ending in 2006, followed by another two years to finish development. This first stage is to last two years, to the end of next year, 2006, approximately and the completed development of the bioinsecticide could take another two years. If successful, the baculovirus could replace broad-spectrum chemicals, reducing environmental harm while targeting the bollworm's larvae.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia
• Mongabay

At a glance

About the Cotton Bollworm Moth

As the sun dips below the horizon, the cotton bollworm moth stirs, its delicate wings unfolding like silken sails as it takes to the evening air, drawn to the sweet scent of blooming cotton with an unerring instinct. With a fluttering dance, it navigates the darkness, its antennae twitching as it homing in on the tender shoots that will sustain its offspring, its very existence a testament to the intricate web of life that binds the natural world together. In this fleeting, moonlit moment, the cotton bollworm moth is a master of its domain, a whispered promise of life and renewal in the stillness of the night.

More insects and spiders to discover

Browse Feravox