MONITORING POPULATIONS OF THE WEBBING CLOTHES MOTH, TINEOLA BISSELLIELLA, USING PHEROMONE LURES

Abstract:
Webbing clothes moth, Tineola bisselliella, is a world-wide pest of clothing and textiles in domestic environments and also causes serious damage to textiles and ethnographic material in museum collections. Monitoring traps are an important component of pest control programmes but sticky traps without lures are not always very effective for the detection of moth adults. The female-produced pheromone was identified by Yamaoka in 1985 but it is only recently that the second component has been accurately identified, and a stable synthetic mixture of the two components is now available in a lure. The paper describes the results of trials in the UK and USA where the performance of synthetic Tineola bisselliella pheromone lures has been evaluated in practical situations. Traps were successfully used to monitor moth populations in museums and stores, and the results show that traps with the lures caught about 20 times the number of moths caught on similar but unbaited traps. The value of lure-based traps for the early detection of adult moths is discussed together with proposals for the use of pheromone traps in pest management programmes.