Scale insects are prevalent urban landscape pests and are considered to move between neighboring trees via wind-aided and phoretic dispersal by cryptic, short-lived crawlers. Crawling likely plays a central role in these dispersal processes by shaping their ability to move onto phoretic hosts or to locate host plants and/or settling locations after being blown off a tree. Additionally, walking capabilities of crawlers drive on...

Tactics that manipulate insect behavior are a component of many pest management strategies. Pheromone-based mating disruption is one such tactic widely used in agricultural systems, but few studies have assessed disrupting other mate communication mechanisms, such as acoustic signals. The most destructive pear pest in the Pacific Northwest USA, pear psylla ( Cacopsylla pyricola ) is believed to use acoustic signals to find mat...