This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by smetan@startribune.com.
Interesting story today in the NY Times on a bug that we probably should be watching for....
MJ
Henn Cty MG
smetan@startribune.com
Tracking Six Legs of Trouble
December 3, 2002
By ANTHONY DePALMA
ANSONIA, Conn., Nov. 26 - Dr. Melody A. Keena's enemy is
armed with supersensitive detection devices and a pair of
deadly pincers that can shear through the toughest armor.
It also has cute blue bands that hang like sagging socks on
the ends of its legs - all six of them.
"It's actually kind of pretty," said Dr. Keena, aware of
the contradiction of extolling the hidden beauty of an
insect as dangerous as the Asian long-horned beetle, which
her research has shown to be an even graver threat to $700
billion worth of hardwood trees in America's forests and
cities than had been expected.
Now that the trees have lost their leaves, foresters,
guided by Dr. Keena's research, are searching for telltale
signs of how far the beetles have spread. Dr. Keena, a
United States Forest Service entomologist, has found that
the beetles are twice as prolific here as in China, their
homeland. Although maple trees are their favorite snack,
the black and white beetles, which can be two inches long
and have body-length spotted antennas, will also feed on
ash, poplar and other trees and deposit their eggs in them.
All this adds up to a formidable foe. But after living with
the beetles in close quarters for the last three years, Dr.
Keena has developed a grudging respect for their powers and
a subtle appreciation of their charms, especially the
random spots on their backs, which resemble a fleeting
glimpse of the night sky. The Chinese call them starry sky
beetles.
"You probably have to be an entomologist to like that," she
said.
Dr. Keena heads several studies at the Forest Service's
Northeastern Research Station, a supersecure quarantine
laboratory at an old Nike Missile Radar Base here in
Ansonia. The only laboratory in the country that breeds and
studies killer insects, it has no signs to direct visitors
to it, an omission intended to thwart terrorists.
Federal inspectors who watch for invaders like the beetle
have even been drafted into the new Department of Homeland
Security.
Like any good soldier, Dr. Keena has learned everything she
can about how her enemy lives so she can more effectively
plot ways to kill it.
The Asian long-horned beetle is the latest in a long line
of invaders that slipped into the United States hidden in
imported goods. Environmental groups consider such
invasions a dangerous downside to globalization. The beetle
was first intercepted in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in 1996.
Scientists say they think it traveled from China as larvae
in wood used for packing crates.
By 1998 the beetles were discovered in Chicago. Hikers and
homeowners have since spotted them in 14 states.
Earlier invaders like Dutch elm disease and the
Mediterranean fruit fly entered the United States in
similar ways, but by the time they were discovered it was
too late to do much about them. Eradicating them proved too
costly, and foresters eventually threw up their hands and
concentrated on slowing their spread.
Although the Forest Service is making contingency plans in
case eradication fails, Dr. Keena believes this war can be
won.
"We've got a good chance with the beetle," she said, "but
it's going to be costly." She noted that the number of
infested trees that had to be cut down had declined.
What makes the long-horned beetle such a threat is that
unlike many other beetles, which attack dead or dying
trees, it goes after living trees exclusively. The beetles
rely on their long antennas to find suitable hosts in
forests and along city streets. Adult beetles use their
formidable jaws to snip open the bark of sugar maples and
17 other hardwood species and lay their eggs under it.
Dr. Keena has found that the beetles breed at more than
twice the expected rate, each producing up to 160 viable
offspring in a life that lasts about 10 weeks. But because
they are the couch potatoes of invasive species, content to
stay where they are, the beetles can be eradicated, experts
say.
Until recently, the only way to treat infested trees was to
fell and burn them, dismaying home owners who mourn the
lost trees as if they were relatives. More than 8,000 trees
have been cut down in New York and Chicago.
The beetles can kill a tree if too many get comfortable in
it for too long. When the larvae mature, they chew their
way out through the bark, damaging the tree and creating
holes so perfectly round they look as if they had been
drilled.
"They're amazing," Dr. Keena said, grudgingly admiring a
big adult perched on her finger.
Getting up close and personal with insects may make some
people squirm, but Dr. Keena, 41, has been fascinated by
bugs since she was a child in Northern California.
"I had to find them when I was a kid and feed them to my
pet lizards," she said.
For her, peering into dozens of jars, each containing one
or two adult beetles, or coming up with a recipe for the
right kind of sawdust to feed the milk-white larvae, is
like detective work. "I like figuring out unknowns," she
said.
When she arrived at the quarantine laboratory in 1989, she
worked on gypsy moths. Later she turned her attention to
the nun moth, a problem in Europe and Asia but not here.
Not yet.
The quarantine laboratory's information about how fast the
beetles reproduce and how far they can fly has helped the
Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service determine where to establish
quarantines.
To create buffer zones, government foresters are treating
uninfested trees in surrounding areas with imidacloprid,
which is also used to kill fleas and ticks.
"If there are no infestations after the first year, the
trees are treated again for two more years," said Daniel J.
Parry, an Agriculture Department spokesman. "If an area can
go three years without any infestation, the problem can be
considered eradicated."
Dr. Keena is also studying how nematodes, tiny organisms
commonly used to attack lawn grubs, can be sent after the
Asian long-horned beetles. She has looked, too, at a wasp
from Korea and a different beetle from China that might be
drafted to fight the long-horned beetles.
But introducing new species to check invaders is the atomic
bomb of the war on insects. It is a last resort because it
can spin out of control.
"We hope we don't have to get to that point," Dr. Keena
said.
After observing the enemy for so long, Dr. Keena has
detailed and intimate information about the beetles. She
has found that the seemingly random spots may actually have
a complex pattern and that males have the unnerving mating
ritual of chewing off a female's spots.
With the Bush administration intent on signing more free
trade agreements, Dr. Keena said, "it's kind of scary" to
think about the arrival of still more invaders.
"If we get too many that require major eradication efforts,
we won't be able to handle all of them," she said. She is
ready to do battle again, but she worries whether there
will be enough public will and cash.
"You do as much as you can," she said, "and then if you
decide you can't do any more and the cost outweighs the
risk, the only thing left is to decide how to control it so
doesn't cause major damage."
http://www.nytimes.
com/2002/12/03/nyregion/03BEET.html?ex=1039946334&ei=1&en=dedeadd01d9d12ec
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