Thirty years of chasing moths in the bush, and what have we learned?

In 1987, a group of entomologists from several institutions embarked on a long-term study of Helicoverpa ecology in non-cropping areas of inland Australia. This work has continued intermittently until this year, with funding from CRDC, GRDC, RIRDC, ARC and the Cotton CRC. We made a total of 79 field trips to the region, which encompassed inland areas of NSW, Qld, SA, WA and NT. Over 2000 sweep net samples for Helicoverpa spp. larvae have been made on over 230 different plant species, mostly natives. H. punctigera was by far the most common species, with 50.5% of samples yielding larvae. Only 4.2% of samples yielded H. armigera larvae, and these were mostly in the northeast of the study area. This is despite the fact that in the laboratory H. armigera larvae survive and grow well on some key inland hosts. H. punctigera larvae were found on 122 plant species from 18 families. Of these, 120 were new host records.