Word: insectes
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...major shift from general landscape management, in which there is a heavy dependence on chemicals and artificial nitrogen sources. “We’ve been trained over the last 40 years that when there is a fungus infestation treat with fungicide, and when there is an insect infestation you use pesticide,” said Carbone, who tends to the plots with his crew. “This is a different approach where you let natural systems improve the health of landscapes and basically take care of themselves.” In addition to improving soil and tree...
Beyond the sogginess and damp, however, is a more dangerous threat: greening, a condition caused by the Asian Citrus psyllid, a sap-sucking insect invader from overseas whose depredations began three years ago. Unlike canker, greening spreads from tree to tree without the aid of heavy winds or rain. Greening, also called huanglongbing or yellow dragon disease, creates misshapen and bitter fruit and eventually renders the infected trees useless for commercial cultivation. As soon as the insects appeared, greening was detected in all 32 citrus-producing counties in Florida, as well as in Louisiana and Texas...
Within three months of the discovery, the insect had become the most common species in the garden and was spotted in other central London parks, sending Barclay on a worldwide hunt to identify it. Correspondence with colleagues around Europe led Barclay to discover that the insect, which resembles the common North American box elder bug, is actually most closely related to Arocatus roeselii, a relatively rare species of seed eaters usually found in central Europe. But those bugs are associated with alder trees rather than sycamores. An insect specimen found in Nice, France, which is now in the collection...
Barclay is not convinced that climate change is responsible for Britain's new inhabitants. European integration may be the cause. "It's very difficult to judge," Barclay says, "because the period of time we have seen global warming potentially influencing the insect fauna is almost exactly the same period of time since the [European Union] opened up its trade barriers between member states. So in the past decade and a half, we've been importing a lot more from Italy and Spain and Southern France, and we've had this climatic change--so we have two potential causes." Whatever...
...struggle to identify the museum mite displays not only the mystery of nature but also the fickleness that surrounds the science of taxonomy. Figuring out which insects are which can be fiendishly difficult; some scientists estimate that we have managed to identify only 10% of the insect world so far. The rest, like Barclay's almond-shaped mystery bug, are perfectly happy to crawl along without any christening or approval from their gargantuan neighbors. But that won't stop scientists like Barclay from trying to give his new chums a proper name--that is to say, a Latin...