Data from: Laboratory evaluation of two insecticide-incorporated nets for the management of Prostephanus truncatus

Insects

Adult P. truncatus were obtained from insect colonies kept in the Laboratory of Entomology and Agricultural Zoology (LEAZ), at the Department of Agriculture, Crop Production and Rural Environment, University of Thessaly, Greece, on whole maize kernels, at 26°C and 55% relative humidity (RH) and continuous darkness.

Insecticide-Incorporated Netting

The experiments were carried out in plastic petri dishes 90 mm in diameter (50.4 cm² bottom surface). The inside of each petri dish was covered with two types of LLIN (0.4% deltamethrin, D-Terrence, Vestergaard INC., Lausanne Switzerland; and 0.34% alpha-cypermethrin, Carifend, BASF Ag, Ludwigshafen, Germany) and a polytetraflurorethylene preparation (Fluon, 60 wt% dispersion in water, Sigma-Aldrich Chemie GmbH, Steinheim, Germany) to prevent insects from escaping. An additional series of dishes with physically identical control netting were prepared without an insecticide treatment to serve as the control. Twenty P. truncatus were then exposed on the insecticide-treated netting in petri dishes for 60, 90, 120, 240 min, 1, 3, and 5 days.

Mortality and Recovery

After exposure, insects were evaluated for mortality and individual P. truncatus that remained alive or knocked down (not dead) were then place into clean Petri dish arenas with a small amount of clean cracked maize kernels and evaluated for delayed mortality after 7 days. Using a stereomicroscope (SMZ-18, Nikon Inc., Tokyo, Japan) under 60× magnification, P. truncatus were classified as alive (moving normally, is able to right itself when flipped over, no twitching), affected (moving sluggishly or erratically, unable to right itself, twitching of antennae or legs may be present), or dead (completely immobile even after prodding) according to prior published definitions. There were three 3 replicates for each time treatment and netting type and 3 subreplicates for a total of 9 replicates for each treatment combination.

Explanation of files

The file "Greece Net Data 2023_All" includes the raw mortality ratings, whereas "Greece Net Data 2023_Recovery" includes calculated recovery values by P. truncatus, where recovery was calculated to "alive" from the initial reading (0 d) in "Greece Net Data 2023_All".