Wasps wage war on behalf of wiliwili trees
2010-09-29
(Press-News.org) A black, two-millimeter-long wasp from East Africa is helping wage war on one of its own kind—the Erythrina gall wasp, an invasive species that's decimated Hawaii's endemic wiliwili (Erythrina sandwicensis) and introduced coral bean trees (Erythrina spp.).
Hawaii Department of Agriculture (HDOA) officials "recruited" the beneficial wasp, Eurytoma erythrinae, and first released it in November 2008 after evaluating its host specificity as a biocontrol agent. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) entomologist Michael Gates' scientific description and naming of the species, together with a collaborator, helped HDOA obtain the necessary federal approvals to make the release.
How the gall wasp arrived in Hawaii in April 2005 is unknown, but it quickly found suitable hosts on which to feed and reproduce, first on Oahu and then other Hawaiian islands, notes Gates. He is with the Systemic Entomology Laboratory operated in Washington, D.C., and Beltsville, Md., by USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS). ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of USDA. Gates' collaborator, Gérard Delvare, is with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Montpellier, France.
Hawaii's wiliwili trees and tropical coral bean trees are commonly used for landscaping, soil and water conservation, and as windbreaks. As larvae, gall wasps feed inside the leaves, making them curled and misshapen. Severe infestations can defoliate and eventually kill afflicted trees.
Female E. erythrinae wasps deposit their eggs inside galls where the pest larvae feed. Upon hatching, E. erythrinae larvae eat the gall wasp larvae. They pupate and emerge two weeks later as adults. The parasites don't attack native wasps or other nontarget insects.
The Hawaiians found their "gall wasp gladiator" after dispatching two entomological teams to the pest's native Africa in search of natural enemies, starting in spring 2006. In January 2007, Gates and Delvare were asked to identify the specimens collected based on their taxonomic expertise.
Gall-wasp parasitism has been as high as 70 percent at some release sites, but continued data collection will be necessary to correlate E. erythrinae's rise to declines in tree damage.
INFORMATION:
Read more about this research in the September 2010 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender. To file a complaint of discrimination, write: USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Ave., S.W., Washington, D.C. 20250-9410 or call (800) 795-3272 (voice), or (202) 720-6382 (TDD).
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2010-09-29
Amsterdam, 28 September, 2010 – Elsevier, a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today released highlights from a new survey that reveals researchers around the globe are not only ready for the next phase in search and discovery, but also prepared to actively contribute to making it a reality.
In developing SciVerse, Elsevier's recently launched search and discovery platform, the company conducted a significant amount of research within the scientific community. Building on earlier qualitative work, the online ...
2010-09-29
Montreal, September 28, 2010 – The consumption of drugs and alcohol by teenagers is not just about rebellion or emotional troubles. It's about being one of the cool kids, according to a study by led by researchers at the Université de Montréal.
"Our study highlights a correlation between popularity and consumption," says Jean-Sébastien Fallu, lead researcher and professor at the Université de Montréal's School of Psychoeducation. "The teenagers we studied were well-accepted, very sensitive to social codes, and understood the compromises that it takes to be popular."
Link ...
2010-09-29
Researchers from North Carolina State University have identified a "tipping point" for national debt – the point at which national debt levels begin to have an adverse effect on economic growth. The findings could influence economic policy discussions globally, and will be distributed at the upcoming meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group.
"If a country's public debt reaches 77 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), bad things start to happen," says Dr. Mehmet Caner, professor of economics at NC State and co-author of the study. "There ...
2010-09-29
September 28, 2010 (Geneva, Switzerland) – At the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) summit in New York this week, world leaders gathered to review progress on the eight goals agreed in 2000 on alleviating world poverty and ill-health by 2015. As the summit came to a close, governments, businesses and aid organisations made commitments totaling $40bn to reach the goals, with particular emphasis on improving maternal and child health. A global strategy for women's and children's health, focused on reducing maternal and child deaths, empowering women and achieving equality, ...
2010-09-29
Amyloid protein structures are best known for the troubles they pose in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Now researchers are trying to exploit their presence in a very different place – in semen – to find a new way to stop HIV.
Scientists have created a substance that targets amyloid structures in semen and have used it to weaken the ability of HIV to infect the body's immune cells in the laboratory. The experimental compound, originally designed to help Alzheimer's patients by disrupting the actions of amyloid in the brain, make it much more likely that HIV particles ...
2010-09-29
Guest relationships can become collateral damage when hotel employees envy the relationships co-workers have with their bosses, according to an international team of researchers.
In the study of front-line hotel employees -- desk staff, food and beverage workers, housekeepers -- workers who have poor relationships with their bosses were more likely to envy co-workers with better relationships with supervisors, said John O'Neill, associate professor, School of Hospitality Management, Penn State. The study showed that the envious workers were also less likely to help co-workers ...
2010-09-29
RUSTON, La. – Geopolymer concrete, an innovative and environmentally-friendly building material developed at Louisiana Tech University's Trenchless Technology Center (TTC), will be featured in a transportation exhibition taking place at the Detroit Science Center.
Developed by Dr. Erez Allouche, research director for the TTC, and his team, geopolymer concrete is an emerging class of cementitious materials that utilize "fly ash", one of the most abundant industrial by-products, as a substitute for Portland cement, the most widely produced man-made material on earth.
"Presenting ...
2010-09-29
Philadelphia, PA, September 28, 2010 – The Epinephrine Roundtable was convened during the 25th Annual Meeting of the Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) in 2008 to explore areas of consensus and uncertainty in the field treatment of anaphylaxis. The panel endorsed the administration of epinephrine to treat anaphylaxis in the field under emergency conditions by trained non-medical professionals. Anaphylaxis, an acute allergic reaction, is sudden in onset and requires immediate treatment. The recommendations of the panel are published in the September issue of Wilderness & Environmental ...
2010-09-29
Stem cells that glow like fireflies could someday help doctors heal damaged hearts without cutting into patients' chests.
In his University of Central Florida lab, Steven Ebert engineered stem cells with the same enzyme that makes fireflies glow. The "firefly" stem cells glow brighter and brighter as they develop into healthy heart muscle, allowing doctors to track whether and where the stem cells are working.
Researchers are keenly interested in stem cells because they typically morph into the organs where they are transplanted. But why and how fast they do it is ...
2010-09-29
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 28, 2010 -- Individual cancer-causing mutations have a minute effect on tumor growth, increasing the rate of cell division by just 0.4 percent on average, according to new mathematical modeling by scientists at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and other institutions.
Their research, appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reinforces that cancer is the culmination of many accumulated mutations. It also highlights the fundamental heterogeneity and randomness of many cancers, consistent with the observations ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Wasps wage war on behalf of wiliwili trees
