Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) is a perennial warm-season grass native to the North American Great Plains. Recently, this prairie grass has received increased attention as a potential biomass energy crop. Little is known about the arthropod community affecting switchgrass grown under either managed or minimally managed conditions. This information is important for characterizing the arthropods associated with switchgrass and developing appropriate management strategies for potential pests. The objectives of this research were to identify the arthropods associated with switchgrass in Nebraska and to document the seasonal abundance of selected arthropods. In 2007 and 2008, arthropods were sampled from May through October using vacuum samples, soil cores, pitfall traps, and yellow sticky traps. Samples were collected from switchgrass stands managed for biomass production and from native switchgrass at Nine-Mile Prairie in Lancaster County, NE. Thysanoptera and Hymenoptera comprised 60% of arthropods collected. Leafhoppers, grasshoppers, grass flies, and wireworms were the most abundant potential pests, whereas beneficial arthropods included ants, rove beetles, ground beetles, parasitoid wasps, and spiders. This research provides important baseline information on the arthropods associated with switchgrass in the central Great Plains.

The Indiana Dunes, and nearby natural areas in northwest Indiana, are floristically rich Midwest U.S. locales with many habitat types. We surveyed bees along a habitat gradient ranging from grasslands to forests in these locales, collecting at least 175 bee species along this gradient plus 29 additional species in other nearby habitats. About 25% of all species were from the genus Lasioglossum and 12% of the species were associated with sandy soils. Several bumblebee (Bombus) species of conservation concern that should occur in this region were not collected during our surveys. Similarity of the northwest Indiana bee fauna to other published U.S. faunas decreased about 1.3% per 100 km distance from northwest Indiana. Thirty percent of bees netted from flowers were males. Males and females differed significantly in their frequency of occurrence on different plant species. For bees collected in bowl traps, the percentage captured in fluorescent yellow traps declined and in fluorescent blue traps increased from spring to late summer. Capture rates for different bee genera varied temporally, with about a quarter of the genera being captured most frequently in late spring and a quarter in late summer. Capture rates for most genera were higher in more open than in more closed canopy habitats. The maximum number of plant species on which a single bee species was captured plateaued at 24, on average. Forty-nine percent of bee species known to occur in Indiana were found at these northwest Indiana sites. Having this relatively high proportion of the total Indiana bee fauna is consistent with Indiana Dunes existing at a biogeographic crossroads where grassland and forest biomes meet in a landscape whose climate and soils are affected by proximity to Lake Michigan. The resulting habitat, plant, edaphic, and climatic diversity likely produces the diverse bee community documented.

Traps in eastern Washington and northeast Oregon wheat fields, baited with a sex attractant for the moth of the wheat head armyworm Dargida diffusa (Walker), captured the congener moth Dargida terrapictalis (Buckett). When the two components of a sex attractant for the wheat head armyworm were tested singly versus together in a trap, nearly all D. terrapictalis captured were in traps baited with the combination of (Z)-11-hexadecenyl acetate and (Z)-11-hexadecenal, indicating synergy of the two compounds as attractants. Traps baited with this sex attractant and maintained through the growing season captured D. terrapictalis primarily in May in Umatilla County, Oregon, and in June and early July in eastern Washington. Small numbers of D. diffusa were present also in these traps, largely coincident in time with D. terrapictalis captured. This is the first demonstration of a sex attractant for D. terrapictalis and confirms the presence of D. diffusa in the states of Oregon and Washington through the identification of trapped moths.