Insects may be enjoying this warmer-than-average winter, and a swarm is expected to arrive in 2024.
Two broods of cicadas, a 13-year and 17-year brood, are both expected to emerge across the Midwest for the first time in 221 years, which could make for a noisy summer. Their impacts on agriculture, however, are not expected to be large.
“Cicadas do negligible damage to plants and no harm to humans,” wrote Barrett Klein, entomologist with the University of
Wisconsin-La Crosse. “Expect to see cicadas after a spring rain, and expect to see a lot of them.”
While there is plenty of excitement around this uncommon insect emergence, determining what pests are going to be most impactful to agriculture this year is difficult. There was a cold stretch of weather in mid-January, but soil temperatures have not dipped low enough for a good winter kill of insects that try to overwinter in the Midwest.
The higher temperatures were this winter, the higher pest population is to be expected. A warmer winter also adds days to the growing season.
“The longer growing season will mean increased generations of pest cycles per season to control,” Klein said. “Focus on scouting, regional monitoring and training for planned response for chemical-resistant or detrimental diseases in new areas.”
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University of Nebraska Extension educator Amy Timmerman said in a video for the extension website that it is hard to tell what, if any, impact this winter has had on insects.
“We don’t know yet,” she said. “We have to look at soil temperatures as a whole. Parts of the state here had a lot of snow cover, providing a blanket to insulate the ground.”
She said many of the soil temperatures in Nebraska and neighboring states like Iowa and Missouri approached but may not have reached freezing despite a few days with significantly below-zero wind chills.
“For corn rootworm beetles, data tells us that soil temperature needs to reach 14 to 19 degrees Fahrenheit for one week, and that needs to be 12 inches down because that’s how deep those larvae can be,” she said. “If you look at the weather data, we haven’t done that. They are cozy under our blanket of slow and overwintering nicely.”
She said March and April may have a cold stretch yet, but it would need to be significant, and then could be detrimental for the planting season.
A new insect in the Midwest is the spotted lanternfly. The Illinois Department of Agriculture confirmed the first detection of this pest as they spread from the mid-Atlantic states. It was detected in September 2023 and it is anticipated there will be more sightings this year.
“If there is a silver lining associated with spotted lantern fly in Illinois, it is that we have no reason to believe that widespread plant or tree death will result from its presence," said Scott Schirmer, Illinois Department of Agriculture's nursery and northern field office section manager in a press release.
"This is likely going to be a nuisance pest that interferes with our ability to enjoy outdoor spaces and may have some impact on the agritourism industry, including orchards, pumpkin patches and vineyards."