Pest

Insect and Pest Insects are small animals that have three body regions and three pairs or six legs. Body regions are head, thorax and abdomen.

Five types of mouthparts are important in identifying insects and in controlling insects.

Chewing—tear, chew or grind food. Examples: grasshoppers, beetles.

Piercing-sucking – punctures plant and suck sap.

Aphid Mosquito

Rasping-sucking—rasps or break surface and suck sap. Example: thrips.

Tomato spot wilt disease

Siphoning—have a coiled tube they dip into liquid food such as nectar and draw it in.

Sponging—have two sponge-like structures that collect liquid food and move it into the food canal. Example: Housefly.

Life Cycles for insects Complete metamorphosis has four stages: a. Egg. b. Larva—worms or caterpillars. c. Pupa. d. Adult—flies, beetles, etc.

Incomplete metamorphosis has three stages: a. Egg. b. Nymph. c. Adult.

Chewing pest a. Beetles—eat leaves, stems, flowers, fruit and nuts. b. Cutworms—usually attack stems, but may eat other plant parts. c. Caterpillars—larva of moths and butterflies and are fuzzy or hairy. Eat young leaves and stems. Roll up in leaves making leaves curl. d. Grasshoppers—eat all parts of plants.

Cucumber beetle

Cutworms

Caterpillars

Grasshoppers

Shucking pest Aphids Leaf bug Mealy bug Scale Thrips Whitefly Mites

Diseases Blights cause plants to quickly turn brown or black as if they had been burned.

Canker causes open wounds on woody plant stems.

Damping off is a fungal diseases that causes young plants and seedlings to rot off at soil level. ONLY IN SEEDLINGS

Galls are round swellings or growths on plants.

Mildew grows on leaf surfaces—both upper and lower--as white, gray or purple spots.

Mosaic is caused by viruses that make the leaves have irregular mottled areas with patterns ranging from dark green to light green to yellow to white.

Rots cause plant to decay and die.

Rust cause small spots on leaves that resemble yellow, orange, brown or red rust mainly on the underneath side of leaves.

Smut is a black powdery disease that causes blisters that burst open releasing black spores.

Wilts are diseases that block the uptake of water in plant stems causing plants to wilt.