ABSTRACT
Pest management demands the permanent search of chemical products that, besides being efficient in pest control, present selectivity to their predators. There is an increasing number of trials that compare strategies of cotton pests control through chemical products, although There is a very small the number of experiments able to identify the impact of these insecticides over the cotton pest predators. The objective of this paper was to compare two sampling methods of arthropods (individualized plants and beat cloth methods) for the quantification of the impact of the insecticides over the cotton pest predators. The best method for the sampling of predators was the beat cloth method, which presented several advantages like being less boring, simpler, more practical, and much faster to be utilized. Moreover, this method still permitted the harvesting of a greater variety of natural enemies, although it is not able to sample eggs and pupas.
KEY WORDS:
Methods of sampling; natural enemies; cotton pests.
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