Earwig Field Day at Lindcove Provided New Insights

On July 27, Dr. Beth Grafton-Cardwell held an earwig field day at Lindcove featuring the work of visiting Spanish student Carla Romeu Dalmau.  Earwigs can be a pest of new citrus plantings when they feed on the flush growth and occasionally damage citrus fruit just after petal fall.  Carla has shown that the flush damage occurs in the spring but not the summer and that adults are efficient predators of various insect pests including California red scales, aphids and collembola.  Thus, they are not always a pest but sometimes a beneficial.  While Carla is heading back to Spain soon, the Grafton-Cardwell research team will continue to study earwigs and develop management tools.