The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires companies selling Bt seed to have resistance management plans. Seed company recommendations for refuge planting distances that every farmer planting Bt corn must use are based in part on this IANR research. Hunt began studying moth dispersal in 1996 as an NU doctoral student working with IANR Entomologists Leon Higley and John Witkowski and continued his work as a IANR faculty member at the Haskell Agricultural Laboratory near Concord. Hunt and Higley are using study results to explore developing more accurate models to predict European corn borer movements and mating patterns. He's also continuing the marker-recapture studies, which involve capturing moths that were fed red or blue dyes as larvae at USDA's Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research Unit at Ames, Iowa.
Researchers place cardboard rings containing marked pupae in fields where they emerge as moths.
They monitor moth emergence and determine dispersal by capturing moths in black light traps around fields. Remnants of their red or blue diets distinguish released moths from wild ones. Several seed companies and USDA's North Central regional corn boring insect research project help fund this research. His research shows female moths are less likely to leave irrigated than dryland cornfields to mate. These findings are important to resistance management strategies designed to preserve Bt corns effectiveness.