Transcript

WIREWORMS! · Cereal Killers

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Music.
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Hi and welcome back to serial killers the podcast all
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about the pests diseases and weeds of arable crops back
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with me today is josie hello how have
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you been i have been marvelous thank you end
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of the academic year my god absolutely brilliant college
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is so much nicer without students i know don't know
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why but there you go without customers
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though you know we'd all be unemployed i know so this
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week we're going to do wire worms do you like
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wire worms oh they're horrible little things
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aren't they you always say that about all the pests and diseases well things
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like little no they're like wormy aren't they yeah so their life cycle they
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start off as an egg and then they hatch into these orangey brown worms yeah
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but they've got six legs so So they're not a true worm, are they?
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No, but they hatch and they can stay in the soil and feed for four to five years, if not more.
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So that's why they're such a pest. Yeah. And then they pupate and they emerge
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as a beautiful butterfly, do they?
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No, a click beetle. A click beetle.
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From the family Elateridae.
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Yeah, or Agroites genus as well. well there's
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about 60 species in that genus and then most of them are could be a pest that's
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right they could be affecting weeds as well i suppose they could be eating weeds
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three species that are particularly of note are lineatus which is probably named
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after carl von lin the swedish.
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Taxonomist obscurus probably because it's hard to
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find and budelata which i
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have no idea why it's called that but there you go and they're all indistinguishable
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from each other that's right but they thing that
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makes them indistinguishable from other
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beetles is that they make a clicking or snapping noise
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to frighten away their predators is that
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what it's for yes it's not like the just the jump or
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anything no no it doesn't they do it to startle their predators and
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then when they do it they flip over onto their underside yeah yeah it doesn't
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sound like a very good defense to me if i was a bird i wouldn't be put off they
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can actually leap at speeds of more than two meters per second can you imagine
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that yeah they'd do really well in the olympics.
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The olympics,
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that's it yeah the uh the wireworm olympics
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the pest and disease olympics right so these are
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going to be an issue for beet crops because they the
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larvae feed off the tap root and if the tap is is messed
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up then you're not going to get a nice beet no that's a beet root
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or a sugar beet that's right can they affect cereals and
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beans and other stuff like that it affects oil
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seed rape cereals root crops doesn't it yeah especially
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winter cropping i think that's right because the the
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females are always laying eggs then
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you're never going to break that cycle especially when they're going to
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be in the soil for yeah anything up to seven years they're
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sort of like two centimeter long adults and probably two and a half centimeter
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long wireworms what i suppose what they might get confused with worms themselves
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leather jackets yeah they do look a little bit like leather jackets but often
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different leather jackets are those like especially turf grass like Like if you're in sports turf,
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they talk about wireworms and leather jackets sort of together almost as the
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sort of larvae that are a problem.
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So what sort of methods of control for these horrible pests?
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With the current kind of trend in not turning your soil over,
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they actually like undisturbed soil.
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Whereas if you were to turn it over, then you would get natural predators that
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would come and kind of eat them up. Yep, songbirds.
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That's right. They love them. But, yeah, it's a choice between leaving the fields
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as they are or ploughing them. Yeah. But...
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Crop rotation yeah if you rotate your
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crops well then you can possibly
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get on top of it yeah stick a couple of crops in
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there that don't like that's right why we don't like them that's right yeah
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it could be it could be a pest that's
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going to be on the the rise with so you say mint
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hill or no till also cover crops if you've got
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if you've got a grass mix in there
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with your cover other crops wireworms build up in in grass
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so if you've got any if you had potatoes following pasture
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or something like that yeah that's it's a big issue wireworms anywhere
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where you've got like if you take on an allotment and it's been
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derelict for five years and then you
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suddenly grow potatoes your potatoes would just get yeah absolutely
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yeah so there
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is a pesticide that's been proven
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effective however that was banned
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in 2020 yeah so there
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is another pesticide that's been recently developed nemathorin
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yeah so that's kind of in the early stages but also it's your deciding what
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to grow afterwards we've done fava beans and another podcast but But they are
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antagonistic to the pest.
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So if you were to grow fava beans, they wouldn't like it.
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They found this way back in World War II in research that they don't like fava beans.
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Buckwheat and brown mustard as well, they don't like that. Yeah.
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Oh, that's interesting.
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Buckwheat is a cover crop as well. That's right. So that'd be interesting.
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I think the insecticides go on as seed treatments as well to prevent this in beets.
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It's a for flea beetle as well as for wireworms but
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it's finding a crop that they don't like so linseed and
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brassica crops as well they don't tend to like yeah i
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think liming the soil when you've got a brassica crop as well will
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help because it's one of those ones like slugs and leather jackets that
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tend to like more acidic soils so the fact
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that you are liming the soil when you're growing a brassica crop should help yeah the
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impact on the arable industry in the uk k is that anything
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from five to 25 percent losses and did
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you know that they pollinate magnolia trees no so
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if you've got any magnolia trees in your garden on your farm i've
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got one i've got a stellar yeah still larger anything
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related to magnolia as well as like a few primitive flowering plants were around
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when the dinosaurs are around there they are pollinated by beetles they don't
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have petals or sepals they have something called teples and the beetles come
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along and they just eat the flowers and beetles the reason beetles aren't.
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Major pollinator in the modern age is
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because they're shiny and not much pollen attaches to
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them whereas bumblebees get loads of pollen attached to a bumblebee
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so they're specialized but they do they they do like and things like flea beetle
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you know you'll find them in flowers especially on your brassicas eating the
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pollen but also transferring pollen so well anything really acts as a pollinator
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which we don't have many of at the moment so we really need to be
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looking at that yeah do you know any other insects with very long
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life cycles in the ground no not
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as long as this cicadas in america and
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japan so they they make they are maker
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if you think click beetles are noisy they're they're next
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level they come out and they come out every year
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but they also come out in synchrony so you'll
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have particular cicada years and they're
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horrible insects simply because they fly about
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a meter and a half above the ground and they're
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massive and they're just a little bit like giant grasshoppers you
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sort of yeah but they fly sort of indiscriminately just looking for a tree to
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land on and they land on your face and you get out oh it's horrible so yeah
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nope that's a definite nope yeah it's one of those weird ones sometimes in biology
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things don't do everything once a year like bamboos take 60 years to flower
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and then they can all flower at once and then die.
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They're out flowering this year, aren't they? I've seen some bamboo flowers,
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yeah. Yeah, quite a lot this year. Yeah, there you go. On a carpet.
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Anyway, we digress. That was wireworms. I did see, I was watching the telly
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like you do, and I saw a click beetle nearly as big as this chap's hand,
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obviously in a different country, and it had big pretend eyes on it.
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Oh, wow. Yeah. There you go.
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Right, got any jokes for us about click beetles? no not really no come on josey
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it's been a joke to every podcast oh that's your we're not really funny are
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they no there you go anyway enough waffle that that was wireworms let's do,
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meadow grass next time lovely all right thanks josey thank you until next time.