2022 Volume 64 Pages 122-124
The southern green stink bug, Nezara viridula (Linnaeus) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), causes damage to various crops such as rice and soybean. The bug species is regarded to overwinter as adults among the foliage of plants such as Cryptomeria japonica (L.f.) D.Don, Juniperus chinensis L. var. chinensis, and Yucca recurvifolia Salisb. However, we found adults of the species in tea fields in southern Kyoto Prefecture where there were none of the above-mentioned plants in the neighborhood in May 2014. This observation led us to suspect that they overwintered in the tea fields. The 2015 to 2018 investigation of the bugs in the tea fields, found that each year they were among the folded cover materials of the tea fields, but not in the foliage of the tea trees. The proportion of surviving adults during winter varied from 22% to 40%, with year-to-year fluctuations. These results imply that the bugs used the cover materials of the tea fields as overwintering sites.
