Leaf Litter
Raking in Notes From All Over

November, 2009

Mothman Chronicles

When the Compsilura concinnata was introduced as a predator insect in 1906 by the USDA, officials hoped this European fly—which doesn’t have a common name—would get rid of the browntail moth, a New England pest that defoliates trees and causes skin rashes on humans. The Compsilura did a number on those pesky browntails—which were thought to have arrived in the United States from Holland in 1896. The problem was, the female Compsilura, which kills browntail caterpillars by slicing their bellies and depositing the maggots that consume them, also decided it would feast on natives such as the mourning cloak butterfly and luna moths.

Hey Sugar, Sugar

The parasitic wasps that were brought from China to the island of Kauai in the 1940s, gave the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association hope that the insects would lay their eggs inside the larvae of the insects that were so detrimental to the sugar cane crop. The wasps were only too glad to do so, but they weren’t particular about the insects they were consuming. This was OK with the sugar cane growers, whose main concern was, of course, the protection of their crop. As a result of the importation of the parasites, however, many native caterpillar species were nearly decimated, affecting the population of the island’s insect-eating birds.

Thistle While You Work

Different varieties of the spiky plant known as thistle are invasive species in much of North America, particularly the Musk and Canadian varieties. When Rhinocyllus conicus was introduced to Canada by the Canadian Ministry of Agriculture in the 1960s, the intention was that the R. conicus, also known as the flower head weevil, chomp up the rampaging thistle. U.S. officials followed suit by bringing the weevil to Virginia, Nebraska, Montana, California and Missouri to control exotic species of thistle, but soon learned that the ravenous bugs will also eat native species.

That’s No Lady

In the 1970s, the southeastern U.S. was plagued by tree-climbing aphids, so biologists released a slew of Asian lady beetles to eat the aphids. The ladybugs found them so tasty that their migration quickly spread from New England to Mississippi, looking for more food. The Asian lady beetle, along with the imported Coccinella septempunctata, the seven-spotted ladybug, have eaten so many other bugs that there’s no food for native ladybugs, causing the extinction of New York’s official state insect, Cocinella novemnotata, the nine-spotted ladybug.

Olive You

The olive fruit fly was recently discovered in Tulare County, causing alarm among olive growers. The fly lives most of its life within the olive fruit, then emerges as a winged adult. The larvae make holes in the fruit that become home to bacteria, rendering the fruit unfit for processing as table olives or olive oil. Current preventive measures include trapping the winged insects or use of insecticide, but growers are now investigating the possibility of importing an African parasitic wasp, one of the olive fruit fly’s only natural predators. The Leaf-let wishes them luck.

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