Question

You recently suggested to Mrs. McDonald a method to test which insect found on her roses was responsible for making the holes in the leaves and causing them to die. Describe your experiment to do this.

Answer 1

Roses are very popular across the world for its fragrance and attractive foliage. The holes in the leaves of roses are generally caused by two culprits - rose slugs and leafcutter bees.

Experiment- to verify the insect causing damage to rose leaves

Procedure-

1. By checking the type of damage - Rose slugs do some round holes in leaves and after some time whole leaf is impacted. The damage caused by leafcutter bees is quite different, thara insect start to make holes at margins. One more significant factor is the season , because rose slugs generally appear between spring and summers.

2. General inspection- the physic of both insects is very different. Slugs are yellow to light green colored body having tan - orange head. The bees are of black, blue and purple colored insects.

3. By using insecticide - rose slugs con be treated effectively with some insecticides but leafcutter bees cant be removed using insecticides. So this is also a useful tactic to check which type of the insect was creating holes. Fine net and cheesecloth also can be used to cover the plant to get protected from bees, but this method is not useful in the case of rose slugs

Conclusion- by direct visualization, checking the type of damage or by using the type of diagnosis we can check the type of insect causing holes in the leaves of roses.