(Information on this amazing bug can be seen below the article)
The Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) took an innovative approach to biological pest control over 60 years ago and established the Palisade Insectary.
To this day, the Insectary is among only a handful of programs across the U.S. that provides farmers, ranchers and resource managers with dozens of species of beneficial insects and mites as tools for use in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs.
The CDA is committed to IPM to combat weeds and insect pests in an economical and environmentally sound way, and as part of that commitment the Insectary leads the way in biological pest control.
The Insectary, located in Palisade, Colorado, produces and releases about 30 different species of biological control agents. These agents are used against insect pests such as the alfalfa weevil and cereal leaf beetle, or weeds such as leafy spurge, field bindweed, purple loosestrife, musk thistle, diffuse knapweed, and most recently the water-using invasive tree, tamarisk. The Insectary has greenhouses and insect rearing rooms as well as facilities for storage and shipping of biocontrol agents.
Insectary staff grows plants, such as the toadflaxes, with their beautiful snapdragon-like flowers, and feed them to insects, such as the toadflax weevil. Don’t feel sorry for the toadflaxes though, they are unpalatable to livestock and wildlife and degrade and devalue rangelands. Fortunately the little black weevils have brought infestations of Dalmatian toadflax under control in western Colorado.
The Insectary started as a local insect rearing facility but has expanded to become an important state and region-wide biocontrol center dedicated to producing and releasing biocontrol agents but also to formulating recommendations and procedures for effective use of biological control in IPM programs.
For more on the Palisade Insectary, visit our website or call (866) 324-2963.
Photo: Oberea erythrocephala
Leafy spurge is a highly invasive, deep rooted perennial that may cover meadows and grasslands with a dense monoculture of waist-high plants; choking out other vegetation and providing little or no forage for livestock. Fortunately there are several biological control insects that are very effective at suppressing the invasion.
Most common are the leafy spurge flea beetles, but in some settings they are getting help from the red-headed leafy spurge stem borer, Oberea erythrocephala (big names for a small beetle).
The stem borers are in the family Cerambycidae (long horned beetles, named for their long antennae), and the adults are dark, elongate, active fliers while the larvae are pale yellow and spend their time within the stems of leafy spurge. Adults are collected in June and July when they are actively seeking out spurge plants, where they lay eggs high in the stems. Larvae hatch and bore down through the stem to the root crown; seriously weakening the plant and stopping seed production. This insect does not reach high numbers and so will not provide control on it’s own but may be very useful in combination with the spurge flea beetles.
No comments:
Post a Comment