Japanese beetle may help fight hemlock-kill...( Blacksburg Va. The eastern hemlock ...)

Blacksburg, Va. The eastern hemlock, a tall, long-lived coniferous tree that shelters river and streamside ecosystems throughout the eastern United States and Canada, is in serious danger of extinction because a tiny, non-native insect is literally sucking the life out of it.

Entomologists at Virginia Tech are now studying a beetle from Japan that may be a natural predator of Adelges tsugae, or hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA). Scientists hope the Japanese beetle will curb the rapid spread of the HWA without damaging forest ecosystems.

Virginia Tech leads the biological control efforts to curb the spread of HWA, which feeds on the cells that transfer and store nutrients in hemlock trees until their needles desiccate. Mass application of pesticides would not be effective, said Scott Salom, professor of entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and HWA project leader. Unlike the gypsy moth, which lives in tree canopies, you cannot spray pesticides over a forest in an aerial flight to kill the hemlock woolly adelgid, which lives at the base of newly formed needles.

Salom and his colleagues traveled to Japan in 2006 to collect 300 adult insects and hundreds of larvae for evaluation at the Beneficial Insects Quarantine Laboratory at Virginia Tech after a scientist at the Osaka Museum of Natural History discovered an adelgid predator in the island country that had never previously been observed. The Japanese beetle does not currently have a scientific name.

Last year, Yale University researchers performed a series of DNA comparisons between HWA and other adelgid populations in China, Japan, and western North American and discovered that the insect plaguing eastern hemlocks originated in the Osaka region of Japan. Virginia Tech researchers are hopeful that the Japanese beetle now under quarantine in Blacksburg will be an effective natural enemy against the HWA because both originate from the same area, Salom sa
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