Behavior
The brown marmorated stink bug is an agricultural pest that can cause widespread damage to fruit and vegetable crops. In Japan it is a pest to soybean and fruit crops. In the U.S., the brown marmorated stink bug feeds, beginning in late May or early June, on a wide range of fruits, vegetables, and other host plants including peaches, apples, green beans, soybeans, cherry, raspberries, and pears. It is a sucking insect, a "true bug", that uses its proboscis to pierce the host plant in order to feed. This feeding results, in part, in the formation of dimpled or necrotic areas on the outer surface of fruits, leaf stippling, seed loss, and possible transmission of plant pathogens.
The brown marmorated stink bug is more likely to invade homes in the fall than others in the family. The bug survives the winter as an adult by entering houses and structures when autumn evenings become colder. Adults can live from several months to a year. They will enter under siding, into soffits, around window and door frames, or any space which has openings big enough to fit through. Once inside the house, they will go into a state of hibernation. They wait for winter to pass, but often the warmth inside the house causes them to become active, and they may fly clumsily around light fixtures.
The odor from the stink bug is due to trans-2-decenal and trans-2-Octenal. The smell has been characterized as a "pungent odor that smells like cilantro."
The stink bug's ability to emit an odor through holes in its abdomen is a defense mechanism meant to prevent it from being eaten by birds and lizards. However, simply handling the bug, injuring it, or attempting to move it can trigger it to release the odor.
Read more about this topic: Brown Marmorated Stink Bug
Famous quotes containing the word behavior:
“The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment: these are not virtues. The goal of the mannerly is comfort, per se.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“The fact that behavior is “normal,” or consistent with childhood development, does not necessarily make it desirable or acceptable...Undesirable impulses do not have to be embraces as something good in order to be accepted as normal. Neither does children’s behavior that is unacceptable have to be condemned as “bad,” in order to bring it under control.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is “All striving is vain,” will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him.”
—William James (1842–1910)