Entomologists Use Dogs to Hunt Down Stink Bugs

Last year at Entomology 2013, the 60th Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America, scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave a presentation called “Exploring Overwintering Ecology of Brown Marmorated Stink Bug Using Detector Dogs.” Now they have published an article about this topic in the journal PLOS ONE.

In this study, the USDA researchers explored forested landscapes in the mid-Atlantic region to locate and characterize natural overwintering structures used by the stink bugs, and they also evaluated the use of dogs to locate them.

Two labrador retrievers named Opal and Tig were trained to detect the stink bugs and to sit when they smelled them. They were then given food rewards for successfully finding the target odor. The stink bugs were mainly found in dry crevices of dead, standing trees with thick bark, especially oak and locust trees.

“The results of this study reveal that there are evident preferences by H. halys for selection of overwintering structures in natural landscapes,” the authors wrote. “It is noteworthy that overwintering H. halys were found almost exclusively from dry surfaces within dead, standing trees … In contrast, no overwintering H. halys were found from downed trees or leaf litter.”

Read more at: Characterization of Overwintering Sites of the Invasive Brown Marmorated Stink Bug in Natural Landscapes Using Human Surveyors and Detector Canines