scholarly journals Challenges, tactics and integrated management of emerald ash borer in North America

Author(s):  
Deborah G McCullough

Abstract Emerald ash borer (EAB) (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire), discovered in southeastern Michigan, USA in 2002, has become the most destructive and costly invasive forest insect in North America. This phloem-boring beetle has also invaded Moscow, Russia and continued spread of EAB potentially threatens European ash (Fraxinus spp.) species. This review summarizes EAB life history, including interspecific variation in host preference, invasion impacts and challenges of detecting new infestations and provides an overview of available management tactics. Advances in systemic insecticides, particularly emamectin benzoate products applied via trunk injection, have yielded effective and practical options both to protect individual trees and to slow EAB population growth and ash decline on an area-wide basis without disrupting natural enemies. Economic costs of treating ash are substantially lower than removal costs, retain ecosystem services provided by the trees, reduce sociocultural impacts and conserve genetic diversity in areas invaded by EAB. Girdled ash trees are highly attractive to EAB adults in low-density populations and debarking small girdled trees to locate larval galleries is the most effective EAB detection method. An array of woodpeckers, native larval parasitoids and introduced parasitoids attack EAB life stages but mortality is highly variable. Area-wide management strategies that integrate insecticide-treated trees, girdled ash trap trees and biological control can be adapted for local conditions to slow and reduce EAB impacts.

2015 ◽  
Vol 148 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean J. Turgeon ◽  
Jeffrey G. Fidgen ◽  
Krista L. Ryall ◽  
Taylor A. Scarr

AbstractAgrilus planipennis (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), is causing extensive mortality of ash (Fraxinus Linnaeus; Oleaceae) in North America. Once detected in an area, resource managers require methods to obtain estimates that could improve management decisions. We studied the within-crown and within-branch distribution and abundance of A. planipennis feeding galleries by sampling 3-m-long branches from asymptomatic urban ash trees and subdividing each branch into 12 sections of 25 cm each. We found galleries in all 12 sections of some, but not all, branches. Section was a significant source of variation in A. planipennis gallery density/m2 of branch surface area. A comparison of predictive power and efficiency of estimates for samples of increasing length, and for samples of the same length but consisting of different combinations of sections, revealed that those based on the two basal 25-cm sections of a branch from the lower-crown or mid-crown of an asymptomatic tree were less accurate and precise than those based on more sections, but were the most cost effective. Whittling more sections per branch, irrespective of the combinations of branch sections per length, improved predictive power but reduced cost effectiveness. We also observed that crown level was not important, and aspect was only marginally so, when estimating gallery abundance per sampled branch.


2015 ◽  
Vol 147 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Therese M. Poland ◽  
Yigen Chen ◽  
Jennifer Koch ◽  
Deepa Pureswaran

AbstractAs of summer 2014, the invasive emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), has become established in 24 states in the United States of America and has killed tens of millions of ash trees since its introduction into Michigan in the 1990s. Considerable research has been conducted on many aspects of EAB life history, natural history, ecology, and management strategies in an attempt to contain this devastating pest. In this article, we review the life history, mating behaviours, and host plant selection by EAB in North America as well as host resistance to EAB attack.


Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 691
Author(s):  
Mark G. Volkovitsh ◽  
Andrzej O. Bieńkowski ◽  
Marina J. Orlova-Bienkowskaja

Emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis, native to East Asia, is an invasive pest of ash in North America and European Russia. This quarantine species is a threat to ash trees all over Europe. Survey in ten provinces of European Russia in 2019–2020 showed that EAB had spread faster and farther than was previously thought. The new infested sites were first detected in St. Petersburg (110–120 km from the EU border: Estonia, Finland) and Astrakhan Province (50 km from the Kazakhstan border). The current range of EAB in Europe includes Luhansk Province of Ukraine and 18 provinces of Russia: Astrakhan, Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Lipetsk, Moscow, Orel, Ryazan, Smolensk, St. Petersburg, Tambov, Tula, Tver, Vladimir, Volgograd, Voronezh, and Yaroslavl. Within these, only seven quarantine phytosanitary zones in five provinces are declared by the National Plant Protection Organization of Russia. EAB was not found in the regions along the Middle Volga: Mari El, Chuvash and Tatarstan republics, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Saratov provinces. The infested sites in St. Petersburg and in the Lower Volga basin are range enclaves separated from the core invasion range by 470 and 370 km, correspondingly. It is possible that new enclaves can appear in the cities of Eastern Europe and Kazakhstan far from the current known range. All previously known infestations in European Russia were in green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica), which was introduced from North America, and individual trees of European ash (F. excelsior). A first confirmed case of mass decline of several thousand of EAB-infested European ash trees in Moscow province is provided. Therefore, there is no more doubt that under certain conditions EAB can seriously damage native ash trees in European forests.


2014 ◽  
Vol 147 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Silk ◽  
Krista Ryall

AbstractThe emerald ash borer (EAB),Agrilus planipennisFairmaire (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) is a very serious invasive pest in North America, causing extremely high levels of mortality to ash trees (FraxinusLinnaeus, Oleaceae) in the United States of America and Canada. Knowledge of buprestid chemical ecology is sparse, but the appearance of EAB in North America and its devastating ecological and economic impacts, particularly in the urban environment, have provided an opportunity to study the semiochemistry, natural history, and ecology of this buprestid in detail. This review will summarise the chemical ecology of EAB to date, discussing studies on semiochemistry, natural history, and behaviour with respect to host and mate finding that have identified several female-produced pheromone components (contact and sex pheromones), and attractive host kairomones. Earlier reviews focused on studies of attractive host volatiles with respect to development of a trapping system and visual and contact phenomena in EAB mate finding. This has led to the development of an efficient trapping system for EAB, with attempts to optimise the range of variables in trap protocols, combining pheromone components, release rates, and combinations with host kairomones, as well as trap type, placement, height, and colour being taken into account.


2019 ◽  
Vol 112 (5) ◽  
pp. 2121-2130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian J Duan ◽  
Roy G Van Driesche ◽  
Ryan S Crandall ◽  
Jonathan M Schmude ◽  
Claire E Rutledge ◽  
...  

Abstract The emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, a buprestid beetle native to Asia, has become a serious pest of ash trees (Fraxinus spp.) in North America since the early 2000s. Due to the impracticality of applying insecticides in natural forests, biocontrol is the most viable method to manage EAB in natural ecosystems. Here, we report the first evidence for the establishment and impact of Spathius galinae Belokobylskij & Strazenac, a larval parasitoid first released in North America in 2016 and 2017 at six mixed-hardwood forest sites, in Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts. We also report current levels of abundance and parasitism of another introduced larval EAB parasitoid, Tetrastichus planipennisi Yang (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae), released in 2015 and 2016 in these same sites. Spathius galinae was recovered at all release sites in 2018, and its density in sampled trees had increased 1.5- to 20-fold (relative to the first postrelease sample year), reaching a final density of 2.3–14.3 broods/m2 of phloem area and causing 13.1–49.2% marginal rate of parasitism at four of the six sites. In contrast, T. planipennisi was only recovered in 2018 at four of the six release sites, and both its density (0.1–2.3 broods/m2 of phloem area) and parasitism (0.1–5.6%) were lower than that of S. galinae throughout the study at the four sites where recoveries were made. Our data fill a critical gap in the development of a biocontrol-based EAB management plan to protect surviving ash trees capable of reaching maturity and producing replacement trees.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Narin Srei ◽  
Robert Lavallée ◽  
Claude Guertin

AbstractEmerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, is an invasive and destructive beetle that causes extensive damages to ash trees in North America. The entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana is considered as an effective biological control agent for EAB adult populations. Using an assisted autodissemination with the fungal isolate INRS-242 of B. bassiana, our research aims to investigate the possibility of horizontal transmission of the fungal disease from infected to uninfected EAB adults during mating. Results show that the efficiency of fungal transmission is significantly related to the sex of EAB carrying the pathogen. EAB males are the promising vector to transmit INRS-242 isolate of B. bassiana to their partners during mating. Results strengthen the potential of the fungal autodissemination device as a powerful biological strategy to control EAB populations.


Forests ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 659 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Jennings ◽  
Jian Duan ◽  
Paula Shrewsbury

The emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire (EAB), is an invasive beetle that has caused widespread mortality of ash trees in North America. To date, four parasitoids have been introduced in North America for EAB biological control, including the egg parasitoid Oobius agrili Zhang & Huang (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae). Monitoring EAB egg parasitism is challenging because female beetles oviposit in bark crevices and EAB eggs and O. agrili are small (<1 mm in diameter). Consequently, multiple methods have been developed to recover this parasitoid. Here we compared two methods, visual surveys and bark sifting, used to monitor establishment of O. agrili in Maryland, USA. From 2009 to 2015, a total of 56,176 O. agrili were released at 32 sites across the state. In 2016, we surveyed nine of the study sites for O. agrili establishment using both methods. We compared the amount of time spent searching for eggs separately in each method, and also analyzed the effects of years-post release, total number of parasitoids released, and median month of release, on percent parasitism of EAB eggs, and the percentage of trees per site with parasitized EAB eggs. We found that visually surveying ash trees for EAB eggs was more efficient than bark sifting; the percent parasitism observed using the two methods was similar, but visually surveying trees was more time-efficient. Both methods indicate that O. agrili can successfully establish populations in Maryland, and June may be the best month to release O. agrili in the state. Future research should investigate EAB phenology in the state to help optimize parasitoid release strategies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Mogouong ◽  
Philippe Constant ◽  
Robert Lavallée ◽  
Claude Guertin

ABSTRACT The gut microbial communities of beetles play crucial roles in their adaptive capacities. Environmental factors such as temperature or nutrition naturally affect the insect microbiome, but a shift in local conditions like the population density on a host tree could also lead to changes in the microbiota. The emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, is an exotic wood borer that causes environmental and economic damage to ash trees in North America. This study aimed to describe the taxonomic structure of the EAB gut microbiome and explore its potential relationship with borer population size. The number of EAB adults collected per tree through a 75 km transect from an epicenter allowed the creation of distinct classes of population density. The Gammaproteobacteria and Ascomycota predominated in bacterial and fungal communities respectively, as determined by sequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene and the fungal internal transcribed spacer ITS2. Species richness and diversity of the bacterial community showed significant dependence on population density. Moreover, α-diversity and β-diversity analysis revealed some indicator amplicon sequence variants suggesting that the plasticity of the gut microbiome could be related to the EAB population density in host trees.


2020 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 326-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Hoyer-Tomiczek ◽  
Gernot Hoch

Abstract Early detection of infestation by the emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis is extremely difficult; hence developing additional methods is desirable. We built on the successful use of canine scent detection for the invasive long-horned beetles Anoplophora glabripennis and Anoplophora chinensis and trained six dogs in detection of EAB. A first test series was performed to evaluate detection accuracy of five of these dogs. Seven different experimental settings were tested under single blind conditions: (1) forest nursery, (2) piles of firewood, (3) firewood on the ground, (4) ash logs on the ground, (5) old urban ash trees, (6) urban forest with ash trees and (7) natural forest with ash trees. In total, 214 positive samples were presented to the dogs, out of which 20 remained undetected. The experiments ascertained sensitivity (correct positives of all positives) ranging from 73.3 to 100 percent and specificity (correct negatives of all negatives) from 88.9 to 99.8 percent in the tested settings. This initial study demonstrates that trained dogs are able to detect EAB scent from sources such as larval galleries in bark/wood, frass, living or dead larvae or dead dry beetles. The numbers of tested dogs and test series were limited, and further studies are needed to confirm the initial results. However, the preliminary findings demonstrate the potential of the method particularly for inspection of wood or plants at entry points.


2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Tanis ◽  
Deborah McCullough

Emerald ash borer (EAB) (Agrilus planipennis), first identified near Detroit, Michigan, U.S., in 2002, has killed millions of ash trees (Fraxinus spp.) in 28 states and two Canadian provinces to date. Trunk injections of insecticide products containing emamectin benzoate (EB) (e.g., TREE-ageR) are often used to protect ash trees in landscapes from EAB, but wounds and potential injury resulting from injections are a concern. Researchers examined 507 injection sites on 61 trees and recorded evidence of secondary wounding (e.g., external bark cracks, internal xylem necrosis and pathogen infection). Researchers assessed 233 injection sites on 22 green ash and 24 white ash trees macro-injected with a low or a medium-high rate of EB in 2008 only, or in both 2008 and 2009. Only 12 of 233 injection sites (5%) were associated with external bark cracks and there was no evidence of pathogen infection. On 39 of the 46 trees (85%), new xylem was growing over injection sites. Researchers assessed 274 injection sites on 15 green ash trees injected annually with EB from 2008 to 2013 or injected in 2008 and again in 2011. Bark cracks were associated with four injection sites on three trees, but no evidence of injury was found on the other 12 trees. All 15 trees had new xylem laid over injection sites. Confocal laser scanning and polarizing digital microscopy were used to assess the integrity of discolored xylem tissue removed from the immediate area surrounding 140 injection sites on 61 trees. Researchers found no evidence of decay associated with discoloration.


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