Lily Leaf Beetles & Research

Your Help is Needed For Our Research Project!

Researchers at UConn are conducting a lily leaf beetle biological control project during the summer of 2014.  If you grow lilies in Connecticut, have a minimum of 12 plants in the lily family (Oriental lilies, Asiatic lilies, Turk's Cap lilies, or Fritillaria) in your garden, and have lily leaf beetles feeding on them, we would like your help.  We will be introducing three species of beneficial parasitic wasps in June and would like to collect lily leaf beetle larvae from June through August.  The parasitic wasps attack lily leaf beetle larvae and over time these natural enemies will disperse from release sites and begin to spread through the state to reduce populations of lily leaf beetles.  The wasps were first introduced in Connecticut in 2012 and have also been released in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, where they are establishing and starting to impact lily leaf beetle populations.  Please contact Gail Reynolds (email gail.reynolds@uconn.edu; phone 860-345-5234) if you would like to participate in the research project.

To see what lily leaf beetles and their larvae look like, visit: 

http://web.uri.edu/biocontrol/lily-leaf-beetle-photo-identification-guide/ 

Photos: Donna Ellis, UConn Extension