| Popis: |
Insects are one of the most numerous group of animals on earth. Studying insects is very important for improving environmental quality, reducing pesticide use, increasing crop productivity and controlling production costs. Insects are mostly beneficial, however a small group of insect pests cause economic losses by attacking crops, damaging food, vectoring diseases on cultivated plants etc. This review study presents an outline of methods that entomologists commonly use in monitoring insects in agricultural crops. There are many methods suitable for monitoring insects in different crops and one of the mostly used are visual detection of insects on plants, and by using different types of sticky traps and nets for insect collecting. Monitoring and sampling of insect underground can be done in different ways: soil sampling by the core, digging a pit, using baits and attractants (e.g. germinating seed baits), Berlese funnels, and for the ground insects the most commonly used method is pit-fall traps. Some insects are monitored by olfactory stimulants, so variations of the abovementioned methods like sticky traps are used in combination with pheromone attractants. However, different sources such as light, scents, or food are used to attract and catch insects. Common attractant includes black light, chemical- attractant (pheromones), food-bait, attractive colors or shapes. Today, insects monitoring methods can be very complex and technologically advanced such as infrared sensors, motion detectors, video surveillance and they are used in combination with artificial intelligence (smart traps). The monitoring method depends on many factors such as plant species and development stage, insect species and development stage, insect population size and all this methods are necessary for making pest management decisions. |
