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Lately, the mail has held quite a few specimens for Roth. Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sent him some cockroaches found in Florida, with a request for identification. He looked at the specimens and decided that they were German cockroaches, but the USDA wrote back, saying that the insect was not behaving like the German roach. Unlike this common species, these cockroaches are attracted to light...
Roth looked at the specimens again and decided that they might be Asian cockroaches, which had never before been seen in America. He sent the specimens to a Japanese entomologist who confirmed that it was indeed the species Roth suspected it to be. Roth and USDA officials speculate that this roach species was recently produced to America...
...decades ago, had been confined to a warm-weather belt between Lubbock, Texas and Beaufort, N.C. Invicta has managed to make a different but equally menacing adaptation. The species has begun nesting in supercolonies, insect megalopolises that contain 10 million to 20 million ants. Says Clifford Lofgren of the USDA'S Agricultural Research Service: "Larger colonies eat crops such as soybeans, potatoes and other vegetables. They have been known to kill young birds and small rodents. Fire ants will start to feed on anything or anybody that collapses from multiple stings...
...lack of vigilance that these formidable bugs have slipped across the border. The USDA employs 1,000 inspectors at 85 ports of entry nationwide. At J.F.K. ten officials examine as many as 2,000 crates of flowers, vegetables, seeds and cuttings every day and pass any pests they find to an insect identifier, a botanist and a plant pathologist for cataloging. An additional 60 inspectors are assigned to the airport's five international- arrivals areas, where they watch for illegal agricultural material in the bags of passengers filing through Customs. But increased travel and shipping have strained these resources...
...exotic bugs gain more of a foothold, USDA researchers have begun exploring new technologies. An X-ray machine that can find soft, fleshy objects like produce is now being evaluated at Miami International Airport. A stethoscope-like device that can pick up the munching sounds of insects as they feed inside fruits and grains is being tested at a USDA laboratory in ) Gainesville, Fla. Not all methods are mechanical. In New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, beagles have been trained to detect contraband flora. Jackpot, J.F.K.'s first beagle, has sniffed out oranges, papayas and two 10- lb. mangoes...