Eastern Movement of the Western Bean Cutworm into Indiana and Ohio

The western bean cutworm, Striacosta albicosta (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), is native to North America. It was first reported as a pest of Colorado pinto beans in 1915. In 1935 adults were captured in western Nebraska (Hagen, 1963) and later, in 1954, it was identified as a pest of corn in southern Idaho (Blickenstaff, 1979). Since its discovery in the late 1880s, it has slowly and steadily expanded its known distribution eastward from Arizona to Iowa (Rice, 2000) and Minnesota (O’Rourke and Hutchison, 2000). The western bean cutworm was known to occasionally occur in western Iowa prior to 1970, but it was not until 2000 that an economically damaging population was found in field corn. Since then, it has become an annual economic pest in western and central regions of the state. In 2004, western bean cutworms were collected in pheromone traps for the first time in Illinois and Missouri. Two years later, in 2006, adults were captured in Indiana and Ohio.