Lethal High Temperature Extremes of the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) and Efficacy of Commercial Heat Treatments for Control in Export Shipping Cargo

Abstract

Since its accidental introduction into the U.S.A. in the mid-1990s, the brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys Stål (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), has spread rapidly across North America and become an economically significant pest of tree fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and field crops (Leskey et al. 2012, Rice et al. 2014). Consequently, there has been tremendous interest in better understanding aspects of its biology. Knowledge on the effects of temperature on the bug’s biology is critical to developing ecological models (Nielsen et al. 2008), predicting range expansion (Zhu et al. 2012), and for potentially developing pest control tactics using controlled temperature (Hammond 2015). In two laboratory experiments, we determine the lethal high temperature extremes of H. halys and efficacy of commercial heat treatments for control of the bug in export shipping cargo.