Word: moths
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Moth Geraghty, assistant dean of admissions at Harvard Law School, said Thursday she approved of the changes in the test, adding that the new scoring scale, from 10 to 50 as opposed to the previous 200-800 scale, is "more realistic," and easier to evaluate for admissions officers...
Only 2 in. to 3 in. long when fully grown, the gypsy-moth caterpillar looks harmless enough: a brownish, multilegged strip of fur with telltale pairs of red and blue spots running down its back. But looks are deceptive. Ever since 1869, when it was inadvertently turned loose in Massachusetts by a misguided French naturalist who wanted to cross the European gypsy with the silkworm to produce a disease-resistant hybrid that would eat virtually anything, it has been munching its way across the Northeast. As many as 30,000 caterpillars can infest a single tree, and each of them...
After the first big outbreak, in Medford. Mass., in the late 19th century, New Englanders began battling the gypsy moth by putting out arsenic, soaking egg masses in creosote, burning down whole trees. But the bugs kept spreading. Wafted by winds, hitchhiking on cars and campers, they slowly migrated to at least 21 states, including Florida and California, although so far only pockets of serious infestation have occurred west or south of West Virginia. In the 1950s, scientists thought they finally had the moths under control with DDT. But the pesticide caused so much ecological havoc, including the death...
Lately, subtler forms of warfare have been introduced, including sprays that contain Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), a bacterium that kills various moth and butterfly larvae. It, too, should be applied early. Another new experimental spray spreads a virus that afflicts the gypsies with fatal wilt disease, so called because the dying caterpillar shrivels into a kind of inverted-V shape. More diabolical are traps scented with sex lures to attract male moths. Scientists have also been distributing different types of insects-wasps, flies, beetles-that prey on gypsy moths at various stages in their life cycle...
Despite all this lethal ingenuity, the only really good news from the bug battlefront is that most healthy trees can survive two or three onslaughts. Indeed, foresters like to point out that the moths often strengthen the woodland by eliminating sickly specimens. But such Darwinian reassurances are little comfort to suburbanites worried about a favorite elm or oak. By now, about all they can do is keep the tree as healthy as possible -faithful watering and feeding help -gather up and destroy every clutch of moth eggs in sight, and wait until next year. -By Frederic Golden. Reported by Anne...