[7] Alabama argillacea is a specialist feeder on Gossypieae,[8] which includes cotton and its close relatives.

Like other anomine erebids, its distribution is primarily tropical and only migrates north in the summer and fall under favorable conditions.

Being a migratory species, the population of Alabama argillacea varied drastically from year-to-year and even location-to-location.

In a letter to The American Agriculturalist in September 1846, farmer Thomas Affleck gave the following account of the destruction of A. argillacea: The Caterpillar ... has utterly blighted the hopes of the cotton-planter for the present year, and produced most anxious fears for the future.

The fields present a most melancholy appearance by looking from the bluff at Natchez across the river to those fine plantations back of Vidalia, nothing is to be seen but the brown withered skeleton of the plant.

[10] Riley (1885)[9] provides a detailed account of dozens of different methods used to attempt to kill Alabama argillacea.

Later patented methods were more complicated: a sweeping-plow that brushed larvae off the leaves and buried them underground, light traps which used chemical compounds to kill adults, and soaking cotton seeds in poison under the false belief that the eggs were laid in the seeds.

At least one farmer was so distraught by the damage caused A. argillacea that he built dozens of large bonfires around his fields in the hopes that the adult moths would be attracted to the light and destroy themselves in the flames.

[9] When large amounts of these insecticides were applied to cotton crops in southern Texas early in the cotton-growing season, the population of A. argillacea would take so long to build up such that any migration that occurred north later in the season became insignificant.

[3] In addition to insecticides, state and local agencies created programs to destroy wild cotton when it was found on non-agricultural lands.

This is because cotton is pesticide- and labor-intensive, returns less of a profit than alternative synthetic fiber products, and other crops have a higher demand.