Abstract
We investigated the flight height of adults of several species of minute insects, including the tea spiny whitefly, Aleurocanthus camelliae Kanmiya and Kasai, using yellow sticky traps set vertically in three tea fields during the end of Oct. to the end of Nov. in 2011. The traps were set at heights from 0.5 m to 3.5 m above ground with 0.5 m intervals; the numbers of target minute insects captured by the traps were counted by binocular microscope. The numbers of A. camelliae adults captured by each trap set vertically showed the max at 1.0 m height above ground: about same height as the tea canopy, although the numbers captured at traps higher than 1.5 m height were very few (one or two individuals). As for the other minute insects, adult males of Pseudaulacaspis pentagona and their parasitoid, Arrhenophagus albitibiae, showed the trend to be more numerous at lower traps, although more than a few individuals (30 - 59, and 5 - 23, respectively) were captured at the highest traps of 3.5 m. The numbers of Trichogramma dendrolimi: egg-parasitoid of Tortricidae, were about the same at each height.
