• Pest Type: Insect
• Crops Affected: Cereals, Wheat
• Scientific Name: Euxoa auxiliaris
• Pest Order: Lepidoptera

Damage
The first signs of damage are holes eaten through the leaf and semicircular notches on the leaf edge. When the food supply is depleted, larvae move in large masses to new areas.

Life Cycle
Larvae: Larvae are pale green-gray to brown in color with the back pale striped and finely mottled with white and brown. The head is light brown with small dark spots. Full-grown larvae may reach 1.5 inches.

Pupae: Pupae are found in the soil, are dark brown in color and are indistinguishable from those of other cutworms.

Adult: 0.8 inches long with a wingspan of 1.5 to 1.75 mm. They are gray-brown "miller" moths with two prominent spots on the forewing.

Control Measures
Scout fields, especially in early spring prior to green-up, and look for these larvae in the soil. In fields where stands are thin and poorly tillered, 1 or 2 army cutworms per square foot may justify treatment. With vigorous wheat stands, treatment is usually not necessary until populations average 4 to 5 worms per square foot. It is important to detect and control army cutworms while they are small, before they cause significant crop losses.

Geography
These cutworms are pests of wheat, primarily in the Great Plains states of the US; but the army cutworm can be found as far east as IL and MI, and in southern Canada. The pale western cutworm occurs from Alberta to AZ and NM, extending eastward to only to western parts of ND, SD, NE, KS, OK, and TX.