Taxonomic and geographic scope

SAP is, first and foremost, a tool to aid the non-entomologist user in identifying which type of pest they may have, i.e. mite or scale? beetle or thrips? Therefore, the scope of the tool is the arthropod pests of palms, including mites and insects. The key may take the user to class, order, family, genus, or species, depending upon the resolution required, the number of representatives of a particular group on palms, and/or whether there is another tool in the resource that addresses that particular group. The pest groups featured in this tool include mites, beetles, termites, moths and butterflies, bugs, and thrips.

This tool provides screening and identification support to cultivated palm pests known to occur, as of 2010, in the United States (continental U.S. and Hawaii) and Caribbean Islands (Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico, Saint Barts, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Virgin Islands). Also included are pests of immediate concern to cultivated palms in the United States and Caribbean - essentially those species that will likely move to this region in the very near future.