Also, many pests just fall onto the ground under the tree as a part of their life-cycle or migration.

Accurately Timed Spraying is the method normally used; these barrier materials are not likely to be worth the labor of installation except on young sensitive trees.

Young trees

• These are usually the only ones needing control, but it's obvious that having to control the pest on any tree will require a lot of labor in contrast to selective spraying.

• Our new materials appear not only to be useful on the trunk, they also can be used on the soil surface to prevent larva from entering or emerging.

• Also, the labor to install and maintain the new stuff is less than any present method, which is very encouraging.

Gypsy Moth

This famous pest starts its outbreak in one location and generally migrates away from that center in an expanding circle, with total defoliation in the middle.

• As the larva populations peak, thousands of them migrate and defoliate until their concentration thins enough to allow natural predators to bring them under control if the outbreak is allowed follow its natural cycle.

• Of course by then hundreds of acres of trees, shrubs and other vegetation have been defoliated, many of them never recover.

We are attempting to develop products to defend a small area from invasion from this type of migration with barrier materials which are not just effective, but also comparable in cost to today's spraying programs.

While the idea of barrier materials being able to stop a mass migration seems unlikely, defending a small area from invasion appears possible.

The problems involved in bringing these materials to the market are primarily cost oriented.

If enough material is put down, it works: so far, this is NOT a standard method.

The academic community is interested, well informed and un-biased in wanting to quantify the effectiveness of this type of product.

We are concerned about what this stuff does to beneficials.

It appears to assist predators by creating a fixed location.
• Normally the beneficials must find a fairly mobile and dispersed pest prey; however, when you install a barrier material of any type, the edge becomes a location where pests congregate by their intention to cross the barrier toward the host.

• With a rather constant and stable pest population over time, the predator population also stabiizes; at least it's the latest theory (Feb,26,96).

• At the present, then, we feel that these new materials can become another part of the standard method of control for catepillar type pests which migrate.