Know Your Pests When Trapping Soybean Looper in the Florida Panhandle

Pheromone trapping is a common scouting method used in collaboration with integrated pest management. A major crop pest of many plant species, including Panhandle crops like peanut and cotton, is the soybean looper.  A soybean looper pheromone-trapping study performed in Panhandle commercial peanut and cotton fields also attracted other species with similar appearances, sometimes in high numbers. Misidentification would result in overestimation of soybean looper populations and likely unnecessary insecticide applications. The sharp stigma looper, due to its high seasonal abundance and flight pattern similar to that of the soybean looper, was most concerning. This insect is not a pest and can be discerned from the soybean looper easily through its wing markings, if someone knows what to look for, but if these harmless moths were unwittingly thought of as soybean loopers, it could greatly skew population numbers and prompt improper applications of pesticides.

This document is ENY-2078, one of a series of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, UF/IFAS Extension. Original publication date May 2022. Visit the EDIS website at https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ for the currently supported version of this publication. This study was supported by National Institute of Food and Agriculture, USDA, NIFA CPPM EIP project # 005649, NIFA hatch project # 005643, and Florida Peanut Checkoff funds. We also acknowledge the farmers from the Florida Panhandle for providing access to their commercial fields.