Lead Researcher: Ivan Drahun

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Wireworms are one of the most significant threats to crop yield in Manitoba. While the adult click beetles pose no major threat to their host plants, the soil-dwelling larval wireworms are serious pests to crops including corn, potato, grains and soybean. The major problem with wireworms is their extended life cycle, which can last up to five years to complete a single generation. Spending the majority of their life cycle underground, in addition to no perfect method of protection, these pests become very difficult to control. Click beetles enter agricultural areas from undisturbed, non-farmed habitats – areas never treated with insecticides that allow populations to build up in high numbers. Once they have invaded a field, wireworms pose a serious risk to crop in rotation for years to come and can cause significant yield losses in infested fields.

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Our objective was to evaluate the threat that wireworms pose to present and future crop production in Manitoba through field surveillance, molecular diagnostics and behavioural bioassays.  We trapped wireworms and click beetles in fields across Manitoba to determine species composition and relative abundance of the major species. To determine the population structure and unravel any cryptic species, we performed molecular diagnostics focusing on the COX1 mitochondrial gene. We also wanted to observe wireworm damage by exposing planted soybean seeds to varying wireworm densities to develop an economic threshold for H. bicolor - the major wireworm species found in Manitoba. We took our study further by analyzing the effect that soil composition and seed treatments have on the feeding behaviour of H. bicolor wireworms. This information will be critical in developing a scouting protocol and economic threshold to aid in wireworm management in Manitoba.