Word: mellitor
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Smartest way for man to fight the insects who rival him for the earth's bounty is to turn insect against insect. The wasp Microbracon mellitor assassinates boll weevils (which last year destroyed 12-14% of the South's cotton), so this week an army of these stiletto-bearing flyers is being propagated at the University of Texas.* The Texas wasp dashes among cotton rows, seeks out bolls full of weevil larvae, plunges her stiletto into each grub, forces an egg through the hollow tube into each paralyzed victim, then flits on to another boll. In two days...
Fortnight ago from Athens, Ga., came word that Dr. H. J. Miller, professor of botany at the University of Georgia, had found an insect parasite known as bracon mellitor which he believes can be used to combat Boll Weevil. Its larvae will devour weevil larvae inside the bolls without damaging the cotton. Familiar to all entomologists is the general principle of pest control by parasites.* But before he could put his discovery into common use Dr. Miller had to hit upon a commercially practical method of spreading bracon mellitor larvae through weevil-infested cotton fields...
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