Billbugs, Sphenophorus spp. (Coleoptera: Curculionidae.) are serious pests of turfgrass in Georgia. Presence of billbugs in turfgrass is not detected until first signs of feeding damage such as discoloration or circular patches appear scattered across the lawn. Although major billbug species and their seasonal abundance have been documented from Carolinas and Florida, little is known from Georgia. Thus, the objectives of the current study are to determine the billbug species, and their seasonal incidence and abundance in Georgia sod farms. Billbugs were sampled for two years (February 2018 – December 2019). Linear pitfall traps were placed in five sod farm fields in central Georgia: two fields at Fort Valley, three at Marshallville. The cultivars in these fields were ‘El Toro ‘, ‘Emerald’, ‘Zenith’ and ‘Zeon’. A total of 3,320 billbugs were collected from various sod fields from mid-February to late December 2019. Weakly monitoring of pitfall traps revealed three species of billbugs so far. The abundant species collected was hunting billbug, Sphenophorus venatus vestitus which accounts for > 90% of the total population followed by nutgrass billbug, S. cariosis,(0.91% ) and uneven billbug, S. inaequalis (0.29%). The adult billbug captures peaked during March –April then declined during June-December for 2018 .In 2019, billbugs were captured during spring and fall months .Adult captures were higher in fully grown grass stage compared to early or late growing stages in both years.
