Thanks Carol in WV for sharing this on FB - we are under siege down my way - the entire winter - Stinky shows up!
Tiny wasp seen as weapon in stinkbug war
Published: March. 1, 2011 at 1:35 PM
BALTIMORE, March 1 (UPI) -- U.S. officials say they are preparing to unleash a tiny terror -- an Asian wasp -- against a rising stinkbug invasion threatening vegetable farms and orchards.
A Delaware laboratory is raising the parasitic wasps and preparing to release them in a campaign against the brown marmorated stinkbug invasion in the U.S. Northeast, The Baltimore Sun reported Monday.
The wasps hunt down stinkbug egg masses and inject their offspring into them, where the wasp larvae consume the stinkbugs from the inside out.
When the wasps grow into adults, they chew their way out, mate and go on the hunt for more stinkbug eggs, scientists say.
"Tests have shown that these wasps will destroy up to 80 percent of the stinkbug population," Kim Hoelmer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist in charge of the project, says. "They're efficient egg-stinging machines. For something so tiny, it's absolutely amazing the behaviors that are hard-wired into their little brains."
Preliminary indications are that wasps are effective, Hoelmer said, and won't attack other, more beneficial bugs.
Stinkbugs invading the nation's vegetable and fruit crops have the potential to drive up food prices just when the nation is struggling to emerge from a recession, experts say.
"I've never seen such a serious pest enter the U.S. agricultural system, if only because they attack so many crops," said Tracy Lesky, a research entomologist with the Appalachian Fruit Research Station in West Virginia.
© 2011 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/03/01/Tiny-wasp-seen-as-weapon-in-stinkbug-war/UPI-94461299004544/print/#ixzz1FNqQWKm2
