Can attract-and-kill suppress South American palm weevil populations in California?

South American palm weevil (SAPW), Rhynchophorus palmarum (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), invaded San Diego County, California in 2014. This weevil has killed >20,000 palms in urban areas, it is spreading slowly and presents and unprecedented threat to commercial date producers in the Coachella Valley. Control options are almost exclusively reliant on insecticide applications. A new approach, attract and kill, exploits the weevil's attraction to its aggregation pheromone and sensitivity to a contact insecticide, cypermethrin. Both compounds are contained within SPLAT, an extrudable matrix that can applied to different non-plant substrates. A large field trial covering approximately 12 square miles has evaluated four different dollop densities of SPLAT, zero (control), low (40 dollops per 1/4 square mile), medium (100 dollops) and high (250 dollops) for control of SAPW in urban areas. Preliminary results from these field trials will be presented and discussed.