The emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis, is an invasive tree-killing pest in North America. Like other
buprestid beetles, it has an iridescent coloring, produced by a periodically layered cuticle whose reflectance peaks at
540 nm wavelength. The males perform a visually mediated ritualistic mating flight directly onto females poised on
sunlit leaves. We attempted to evoke this behavior using artificial visual decoys of three types. To fabricate decoys
of the first type, a polymer sheet coated with a Bragg-stack reflector was loosely stamped by a bioreplicating die.
For decoys of the second type, a polymer sheet coated with a Bragg-stack reflector was heavily stamped by the same
die and then painted green. Every decoy of these two types had an underlying black absorber layer. Decoys of the
third type were produced by a rapid prototyping machine and painted green. Fine-scale features were absent on the
third type. Experiments were performed in an American ash forest infested with EAB, and a European oak forest
home to a similar pest, the two-spotted oak borer (TSOB), Agrilus biguttatus. When pinned to leaves, dead EAB
females, dead TSOB females, and bioreplicated decoys of both types often evoked the complete ritualized flight
behavior. Males also initiated approaches to the rapidly prototyped decoy, but would divert elsewhere without
making contact. The attraction of the bioreplicated decoys was also demonstrated by providing a high dc voltage
across the decoys that stunned and killed approaching beetles. Thus, true bioreplication with fine-scale features is
necessary to fully evoke ritualized visual responses in insects, and provides an opportunity for developing insecttrapping
technologies.
The Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis, is an invasive species threatening the ash trees of North America. EABs exhibit a mating behavior in which the flying male will spot a stationary female at rest, then execute a pouncing maneuver where he dives sharply onto the female. It is thought that this pouncing behavior is cued by some visual signal from the elytra of the EAB. A method for replicating the elytra of the EAB as artificial decoys was devised and implemented. In a field experiment, four types of bioreplicated EAB decoys with a dead EAB female to determine if the former were effective at cuing the pouncing behavior in males.
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