Gluttonous Exclamation Scoop

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

The exclamation scoop is everywhere. This polyphagous pest damages a wide variety of crops from a wide variety of families. Winter crops also suffer from its attacks. No less beloved by this villain are sunflower, cotton, potatoes, strawberries, corn, beets, lettuce, turnips, beans, peas, onions and cabbage with carrots. Exclamation scoops are somewhat reminiscent of winter scoops, but they are slightly less common and are more cold-resistant. Most often, they damage vegetation near the bases, capturing tubers with roots and thereby causing serious damage to crops

Meet the pest

The exclamation scoop is a harmful butterfly that ranges in size from 35 to 45 mm. Its front winglets are one-colored and practically do not contain transverse stripes. In females, they are usually dark brown or dark brown, and in males, they are light, from yellowish-grayish color to brownish. Also on the wings of the pests are reniform brownish-black spots. As for the hind wings, they are brown in females, and light in males.

The eggs of exclamation scoops reach 0.7-0.9 mm in size. They are equipped with 34 - 38 radial ribs and are painted in grayish shades. Caterpillars of these parasites are somewhat reminiscent of the caterpillars of winter scoops. Their body is dull, grayish-brown or yellow-brown, and the breast and head are reddish.

Yellow-brown pupae 16 - 20 mm in size, in addition to two sharp outgrowths on the body, are endowed with a pair of tubercles on the sides and a pair of spines on the dorsal side. Upon close examination, one can find perfectly distinguishable wing buds in them.

Caterpillars that have reached the sixth stage overwinter in the soil. In spring, they pupate in the surface soil layer. And the years of butterflies are celebrated already in June, in the first and second half of the month. With the emergence of butterflies of winter scoops in exclamation scoops, the difference is only a few days - winter scoops fly out a little earlier. Butterflies fly, as a rule, in the evenings and at night. Artificial light is incredibly attractive to them. In the daytime, pests hide in the shade of trees or in dense grass, sometimes they do not hesitate to fly into the premises. And the additional nutrition of these voracious garden enemies occurs mainly on flower plants.

Eggs are laid by exclamation scoops on dry residues of vegetation or on the soil. Sometimes females also place them on leaves of weeds and cultivated plants located in close proximity to the ground. Twelve to fourteen days later, voracious caterpillars are selected from the laid eggs, feeding on a variety of vegetation. Their taste preferences encompass about seventy-five plant species from thirty-two families.

In the steppe zone, the development of exclamation moths is observed in two generations, however, the years of butterflies, representatives of the second generation, are distinguished by a rather low intensity. And caterpillars of the second generation are not even averse to feasting on winter crops. Despite the fact that most of the life of the harmful larvae passes in the soil, they easily reach the leaves of various crops.

How to fight

One of the most important preventive measures to combat these garden pests is deep digging of the soil in the fall. The sides of the plots must be mowed, and weeds must be destroyed.

Pheromone traps have proven themselves quite well in the fight against exclamation scoops. To identify gluttonous parasites, such traps are hung over plants at a height of 20-25 centimeters on pre-installed pegs-stands.

Sometimes harmful butterflies are caught on fermented molasses poured into small troughs.

Cultivated plants can be treated with "Lepidocide", which takes about 2 - 3 grams per liter of water.