Missouri Soybean Looper Monitoring

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Soybean Loopers can easily be identified by the two pairs of abdominal prolegs near the back of the body. All other crop caterpillars have either three or four pairs of abdominal prolegs. Loopers also have a very characteristic behavior when they walk, which gives them their name, looper. Soybean loopers are a tropical pest that migrate to Delta states from the Caribbean and extreme southern Louisiana. When spring winds are from the Gulf of Mexico, loopers are blown north. That's why soybean loopers traditionally show up first in the south and move north. Threshold levels are 25 percent defoliation and that equates to around 4 to 6 loopers per row foot. Soybean plants are relatively tolerant of early-season defoliation. Soybean Loopers are generally not a economic problem in the upper mid-west.

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