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Pinus albicaulis, known by the common names whitebark pine, white bark pine, white pine, pitch pine, scrub pine, and creeping pine, is a conifer tree native to the mountains of the western United States and Canada, specifically subalpine areas of the Sierra Nevada, Cascade Range, Pacific Coast Ranges, and Rocky Mountains. It shares the common name "creeping pine" with several other plants.
Ambrosia beetles are beetles of the weevil subfamilies Scolytinae and Platypodinae, which live in nutritional symbiosis with ambrosia fungi. The beetles excavate tunnels in dead, stressed, and healthy trees in which they cultivate fungal gardens, their sole source of nutrition. After landing on a suitable tree, an ambrosia beetle excavates a tunnel in which it releases spores of its fungal symbiont. The fungus penetrates the plant's xylem tissue, extracts nutrients from it, and concentrates the nutrients on and near the surface of the beetle gallery. Ambrosia fungi are typically poor wood degraders, and instead utilize less demanding nutrients. Symbiotic fungi produce and detoxify ethanol, which is an attractant for Ambrosia beetles and likely prevents growth of antagonistic pathogens and selects for other beneficial symbionts. The majority of ambrosia beetles colonize xylem of recently dead trees, but some attack stressed trees that are still alive, and a few species attack healthy trees. Species differ in their preference for different parts of trees, different stages of deterioration, and in the shape of their tunnels ("galleries"). However, the majority of ambrosia beetles are not specialized to any taxonomic group of hosts, unlike most phytophagous organisms including the closely related bark beetles. One species of ambrosia beetle, Austroplatypus incompertus exhibits eusociality, one of the few organisms outside of Hymenoptera and Isoptera to do so.
A bark beetle is the common name for the subfamily of beetles Scolytinae. Previously, this was considered a distinct family (Scolytidae), but is now understood to be a specialized clade of the "true weevil" family (Curculionidae). Although the term "bark beetle" refers to the fact that many species feed in the inner bark (phloem) layer of trees, the subfamily also has many species with other lifestyles, including some that bore into wood, feed in fruit and seeds, or tunnel into herbaceous plants. Well-known species are members of the type genus Scolytus, namely the European elm bark beetle S. multistriatus and the large elm bark beetle S. scolytus, which like the American elm bark beetle Hylurgopinus rufipes, transmit Dutch elm disease fungi (Ophiostoma). The mountain pine beetle Dendroctonus ponderosae, southern pine beetle Dendroctonus frontalis, and their near relatives are major pests of conifer forests in North America. A similarly aggressive species in Europe is the spruce ips Ips typographus. A tiny bark beetle, the coffee berry borer, Hypothenemus hampei is a major pest on coffee plantations around the world.
The mountain pine beetle is a species of bark beetle native to the forests of western North America from Mexico to central British Columbia. It has a hard black exoskeleton, and measures approximately 5 millimetres, about the size of a grain of rice.
In ecology, a disturbance is a temporary change in environmental conditions that causes a pronounced change in an ecosystem. Disturbances often act quickly and with great effect, to alter the physical structure or arrangement of biotic and abiotic elements. A disturbance can also occur over a long period of time and can impact the biodiversity within an ecosystem.
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Andrew Delmar Hopkins was an American entomologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though self-taught, his scientific understanding of forest entomology was exceptional. He received an honorary doctorate from West Virginia University and in 1902 he went to work for the US Department of Agriculture. He was subsequently named head of the newly created Division of Forest Insect Investigations. He became a specialist in the bark beetle family Scolytidae, especially the genus Dendroctonus, species of which are the most destructive insects in coniferous forests of North America. His taxonomic monographs on these beetles are classics. He proposed the Law of Bioclimatics and he also developed the Hopkins Notes and Records System, a system he brought into the federal government when he first came to work for the Division of Entomology in the late 1890s. Hopkins’ research is one of the cornerstones of entomology on the North American continent and he is often referred to as the “father of North American forest entomology.”
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Ips is a genus of beetles in the family Curculionidae, the true weevils. They are bark beetles, members of the subfamily Scolytinae. Species are distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Some are known as introduced species in Australia and Africa. Many species are pests of forest trees, especially pines and spruces. They are known commonly as engraver beetles, ips engraver beetles, and pine engravers.
Simon R Leather Hon.FRES was an entomologist in the UK, he was Professor of Entomology at Harper Adams University, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and an expert in aphids and applied entomology.
Complex early seral forests, or snag forests, are ecosystems that occupy potentially forested sites after a stand-replacement disturbance and before re-establishment of a closed forest canopy. They are generated by natural disturbances such as wildfire or insect outbreaks that reset ecological succession processes and follow a pathway that is influenced by biological legacies that were not removed during the initial disturbance. Complex early seral forests develop with rich biodiversity because the remaining biomass provides resources to many life forms and because of habitat heterogeneity provided by the disturbances that generated them. In this and other ways, complex early seral forests differ from simplified early successional forests created by logging. Complex early seral forest habitat is threatened from fire suppression, thinning, and post-fire or post-insect outbreak logging.
John Conrad Moser was an American zoologist, forestry researcher. entomologist and acarologist. He conducted research on the leafcutter ant Atta texana and the red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta and focused his studies not only on these ants, but specifically also to the mite fauna, being associated with these insects. Also bark beetles, Scolytinae, and associated mites were a remarkable part of his pioneering research contributions. His extensive mite collection contains countless species of different major mite-taxa from around the world, with most of them representing phoretic species, which use insects to be carried to their new habitats. Moser described numerous new mite species and some species are also named after him.
Species which are not native to a forest ecosystem can act as an agent of disturbance, changing forest dynamics as they invade and spread. Invasive insects and pathogens (diseases) are introduced to the United States through international trade, and spread through means of natural and human-dispersal. Invasive insects and pathogens are a serious threat to many forests in the United States and have decimated populations of several tree species, including American chestnut, American elm, eastern hemlock, whitebark pine, and the native ash species. The loss of these tree species is typically rapid with both short and long-term impacts to the forest ecosystem.
The current bark beetle infestation in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States was first detected in 1996. It involved the Mountain pine beetle, which has since spread across millions of acres of dense forest land. In addition, Spruce beetle populations have also been growing in the area in recent years and are further contributing to the existing outbreak. One of the main factors limiting bark beetle population growth is the temperature they can survive at and climate change has raised the average temperature in the region resulting in warmer winters and hotter, drier summers. This not only sped up the bark beetle reproduction process by providing more time per year for them to complete their developmental stages, moisture stressing due to hotter temperatures also weakens the trees’ defense against attacks by reducing resin production. Furthermore, forest management has also played a significant role as many forests in the region have very dense tree populations which facilitates faster spreading from tree to tree, as well as weakening tree defenses further by stressing them through excessive competition.
References
- ↑ "Six Lab". www.cfc.umt.edu. Retrieved 2020-07-12.
- 1 2 3 Szpaller, Keila (2 February 2016). "UM scientist gains national attention for research on beetles". missoulian.com. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ↑ Rosner, Hillary (2015-04-01). "The Bug That's Eating the Woods". National Geographic Magazine. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- 1 2 3 4 athenssciencecafe (2020-01-02). "Deadly realism, science communication, and dropping out of high school: an interview with Dr. Diana Six". Athens Science Observer. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ↑ Schiffman, Richard (2016-01-04). "How Science Can Help to Halt The Western Bark Beetle Plague". Yale E360. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ↑ Koehler, Matthew (2018-09-11). "Dr. Diana Six discovers genetic differences in trees untouched by mountain pine beetles". forestpolicypub.com. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ↑ "Dr. Diana Six, UM Scientist, Gets National Attention | Institute on Ecosystems". montanaioe.org. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
- ↑ "UM professor wins 2018 Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
- ↑ Six, Diana L.; Wingfield, Michael J. (2011-01-07). "The Role of Phytopathogenicity in Bark Beetle–Fungus Symbioses: A Challenge to the Classic Paradigm". Annual Review of Entomology. 56 (1): 255–272. doi:10.1146/annurev-ento-120709-144839. hdl: 2263/15796 . ISSN 0066-4170. PMID 20822444.
- ↑ Bourtzis, Kostas. Miller, Thomas A. (2009). Insect symbiosis. CRC Press. ISBN 978-1-4200-6411-7. OCLC 302116637.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ Six, Diana L. (2012). "Ecological and Evolutionary Determinants of Bark Beetle —Fungus Symbioses". Insects. 3 (1): 339–366. doi: 10.3390/insects3010339 . PMC 4553632 . PMID 26467964.
- ↑ Bentz, Barbara (2005). Bark Beetle Outbreaks in Western North America: Causes and Consequences. University of Utah Press. ISBN 978-0-87480-965-7. OCLC 298778885.
- ↑ Six, Diana L.; Vergobbi, Clare; Cutter, Mitchell (2018). "Are Survivors Different? Genetic-Based Selection of Trees by Mountain Pine Beetle During a Climate Change-Driven Outbreak in a High-Elevation Pine Forest". Frontiers in Plant Science. 9: 993. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2018.00993 . ISSN 1664-462X. PMC 6064936 . PMID 30083173.
