The Great Pumpkin

This summer we will have a new graduate student joining the lab, Ben Phillips. Ben will be starting a new research project focused on enhancing biological control and pollination in pumpkin. Pumpkin is attacked by many insect pests including the squash bug, striped cucumber beetle and spotted cucumber beetle.

These pests are attacked by a number of natural enemies including insect predators, nematodes, and wasp and fly parasitoids. To get pumpkins, you also need bees and this crop is pollinated by a diversity of bees including managed honey bees, bumble bees and squash bees (shown below in squash flower).

Ben's project will measure the costs (planting and maintenance costs) and benefits (in yield and averted pesticide use) of adding floral buffer strips adjacent to pumpkin fields. We will be building this project on some really cool work conducted by Anna Fiedler, Julianna Tuell, Doug Landis and Rufus Isaacs at Michigan State University. They compared the attractiveness of exotic annual and native perennial plants to beneficial insects and came up with a recommended list of native plants for use in this type of agricultural habitat management (http://nativeplants.msu.edu/). From this list, we have developed a seed mix of native Ohio plants that we will be planting adjacent to the pumpkin fields. We will compare the amount of biological control and pollination we receive in pumpkin fields with and without these strips. We will also compare the species of insects providing these services within both treatments. This work is being done in collaboration with Brad Bergefurd (OSU), the Pollinator Partnership and economist Eric Nordman at Grand Valley State University.