ARTIFICIAL FEEDING SYSTEM FOR THE SQUASH BUG, ANASA TRISTIS (DE GEER) (HETEROPTERA: COREIDAE)

Squash bugs, Anasa tristis (De Geer) (Heteroptera: Coreidae), did not feed on liquid diet-filled feeding sachets used traditionally for feeding homopterans, or on pouchlike artificial feeding source (AFS) containing a meridic diet developed for rearing the western tarnished plant bug, Lygus hesperus Knight, another heteropteran. However, excised cubes of squash fruit, vacuum infiltrated with a suspension of the desired diet and offered above a screen barrier, were accepted. During a 48-hr testing period, all cube-fed adult insects survived, while 35% of those fed on the meridic diet offered in parafilm pouches and 40% of those fed on 5% sucrose offered in sachets died. After blue food coloring was added to the diets as a marker, the excretory fluids of 75% of insects fed on infiltrated cubes was blue in color indicating that feeding had occurred, while no blue defecation occurred when dye-amended diets were offered in the other two systems. The A. tristis AFS provides a convenient system for studying the feeding behavior of squash bugs and provides an alternative to whole plants for studying the etiology of cucurbit yellow vine disease.