The Interaction of Cotton and Boll Weevil (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) — A Study of Co-Adaptation

Abstract

The growth parameters for cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) were examined via optimization studies to determine if the observed values were optimal for the season lengths and weather patterns found in California and Nicaragua. The parameters observed for Nicaraguan cotton were further examined to determine if predation by boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis Boh.) of small cotton fruit (squares) could explain the observed discrepancies. All of the observed growth parameters except the fruit bud production rate for the Acala SJ II variety of cotton which is grown in California appeared to be reasonably optimal for California condition (i.e. boll weevil does not occur in California). By contrast, the parameters for the Nicaraguan variety were sub-optimal if boll weevil was excluded from the analysis, but near optimal if the population dynamics of pest were included.

A model to simulate the population dynamics of Bemisia tabaci Genn. (Stern., Aleyrodidae) on cotton in the Sudan Gezira

“…GUTIERREZ and coworkers modeled cotton growth and development to study the interactions of yield forming processes with arthropod populations (GUTIERREZ et al l975,1977a(GUTIERREZ et al l975, , 1977bWANG et al 1977;GUTIERREZ and WANG 1979, GUTIERREZ et al 1979a, 1979b, 1980. Basically, the model is composed of balance equations for leaf, stem, root and fruit PO ulations and the nutrient pool (GUTIERREZ et a].…”

“…The analysis of the B. tabaci population dynamics on cotton is based on the concept of time-varying life tables for poikilotherm organisms. This approach follows the work of HUGHES (1963), HUGHES and GILBERT (1968), GILBERT and HUGHES (1971), GILBERT and GUTIERREZ (1973), GILBERT et al (1976), FRAZER and GILBERT (1976) that was successfully introduced into the analysis of agroecosystems by GUTIERREZ et al (1975GUTIERREZ et al ( , 1977aGUTIERREZ et al ( , 1979aGUTIERREZ et al ( , 1979b In modelling the cotton white fly system, the distribution of developmental times of organisms was described with a time-varying distributed process (MANETSCH 1976). This method has been widely used to simulate the phenology of many arthropod pests ( WELCH et al 1978;ASQUITH et al 1980;BAUMGARTNER and CHARMILLOT 1983), and was recently presented in a pioneering work on a multitrophic level population model by GUTIERREZ and BAUMGARTNER (in press).…”

Feature Article—Operations Research for Agricultural Pest Management

“…9) for a nonlinear system describing cotton fruiting d3^namics. Except for a few cases (Gutierrez et al [1979] as age-dependency is an important consideration for reproduction and mortality. A mathematical formulation using time dependent parameters for these processes is presented in Hoppensteadt.…”

The life system of the yellow-headed fireworm, Acleris minuta (Robinson) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae)

“…Models of the life systems of many of the major economic pests, including the tobacco budworm (Stinner et al 1974b, Hartstack et al 1976), the corn earworm (Stinner et al 1974b, Hartstack et al 1976, Logan et al 1979, the cereal leaf beetle (Helgesen and Haynes 1972, Gutierrez et al 1974, Tummala et al 1975, the alfalfa weevil (Ruesink 1976), the boll weevil (Jones 1975, Gutierrez et al 1979, the European corn borer (Loewer et al 1973), the Douglas-fir tussock moth (Campbell 1977), and the southern pine beetle are in various stages of construction and phases of recon struction. These pioneering efforts in dynamic systems analysis have been of a descriptive nature (Ruesink 1976).…”