Disrupted winter sleep for crop-eating pests.

• Position: Pest control by terminating diapause early - Harvest

The creation of compounds that disrupt a worldwide pest's winter sleep hints at the potential to develop natural and targeted controls against crop-eating insects, suggests research from Ohio State University, Columbus. Scientists have designed agents that interfere with the protective dormancy period of the corn earworm, a species that infests more than 100 types of plants and costs U.S. farmers an estimated $2,000,000,000 a year in losses and control costs.

The compounds, composed of synthetic molecules that mimic the structure of a hormone in these insects, have three different effects on diapause, a hibernation-like state of arrested development that allows many types of bugs to survive through the winter. The agents can force the insects out of diapause prematurely, prevent them from ever entering this state, or block the termination of it.

Any of these cases could be described as "ecological suicide," explains David Denlinger, professor of entomology and evolution, ecology and organismal biology. "Diapause is such an important aspect of the life cycle. If we can do anything to disrupt the timing of that make them go into diapause at the wrong time or break them out too early when there is no food available, that would be a pretty effective tool and a possible control strategy--and we now have the means to do all three of those things.

The period of hibernation for insects is controlled in part by the diapause hormone. In the corn earworm...