Untold Stories, Beyond Methyl Bromide

“THE IDEA TO write this book came to me after I retired in 2005 and was cleaning out, re-reading, and reorganizing 40 years of files…in spite of three books and more than 200 journal publications and book chapters, my files filled with history and unpublished data were headed for the trash bin…the greater my urge to somehow pull the stories together into a single read-through description of my career…unique, it is the approach I took and the philosophy behind my approach to do hypothesis-driven research starting in the field, followed by the laboratory,” writes R. James Cook in the “Preface” to his book, Untold Stories (APS Press, 2017).

In 1974, Cook and Kenneth F. Baker co-authored a landmark book, Biological Control of Plant Pathogens. That book, which in some ways is a precursor to Untold Stories, summarized scientific evidence relevant to creating ecological balances favoring beneficial organisms (e.g. biocontrol agents, antagonists, competitors) as pesticide alternatives to control pathogens capable of weakening and destroying plants, including major food crops such as potato and wheat. Human medicine has at various times in various places employed a similar biological approach, such as using bacteriophages to fight diseases such as cholera, but for an array of reasons biological control has found more fertile ground in agriculture. Ecological balances can be tilted or nudged from pathogens to beneficial organisms in various ways, including via soil pH adjustments, tillage systems, cropping sequences, fallows, composts, amendments, nutrients, etc. The specifics can vary widely among crops, individual fields, regions, soil types, etc. Dr. Cook, as the Untold Stories subtitle, “Forty Years of Field Research on Root Diseases of Wheat,” hints, found wheat a fertile microcosm for exploring the phenomena of naturally disease suppressive soils for producing healthy crops.

Cook’s job when he joined the USDA Agricultural Research Service included soil diseases afflicting wheat, one of humanity’s most ancient crops and a worldwide dietary staple. The USA grew 45.7 million acres of wheat in 2017, most of it winter planted varieties, the lowest acreage since record keeping began in 1919. USA farmers grow twice as much corn and soybean, roughly 90 million acres of each. Wheat exports earn the USA roughly $6 billion a year, out of $140 billion in total agricultural exports. Though wheat helps the USA balance of trade, family farms growing wheat are not sustainable or economically viable if soil pesticides are used. Dr. Cook’s challenge was curing wheat soil diseases without costly pesticides. In the 1970s, the mainstream view was that solving pest problems without pesticides was drug-induced organic hippie crazy talk, a near impossible task with low probability of success.

Fortunately Dr. Cook possessed sound inner instincts complemented by scientific understanding of ecology and microbiology, with an emphasis on biological control of plant diseases absorbed working alongside Kenneth Baker and others at the University of California, Berkeley where biological control was still honored and respected despite falling from its early 20th century heights during the synthetic pesticide era. Cook briefly acknowledges Louis Pasteur, the famous French freelance microbiologist, chemist and entomologist who developed modern medical germ theory and laid the foundations for modern epidemiology while alleviating a mysterious silkworm colony collapse (disease epidemic) depressing the mid-19th century French economy.

On page 236 of Untold Stories, Cook quotes Pasteur: “In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind.” I would go back one step more to Pasteur’s mentor, chemist Jean Baptiste Dumas, who according to French-borne microbiologist René Dubos, persuaded a reluctant Pasteur to tackle the silkworm problem despite an insect ignorance for which he was widely ridiculed: “To Pasteur’s remark that he was totally unfamiliar with the subject, Dumas had replied one day: ‘So much the better! For ideas, you will have only those which shall come to you as a result of your observations!’” Microbiologist Alexander Fleming, famous for the fungal antibiotic penicillin, noted another important factor: “Louis Pasteur in his youth and throughout his life believed in hard work. He lived for his work and put his whole heart and soul into it. His was not a 40-hour week. He worked so constantly in his laboratory that it was inevitable that he became a beautiful technician…”

Another message embedded in Cook’s Untold Stories: Successfully tackle hard problems that appear insoluble to everyone else, and the probability of job security and life success increase. Cook developed an expertise in finding cooperative wheat farmers and locating fields where natural biological controls seemed to be working on their own. Then did a laboratory form of reverse ecological process engineering to find out why these fields developed a disease immunity or natural suppression of wheat soil pathogens. When you can replicate or duplicate the phenomena experimentally, then a degree of understanding can be claimed.

 

Untold Stories feels like the real nitty-gritty, with behind-the-scenes stories about how research projects are accomplished. The type of details typically omitted from science journals, by design. If anyone dared put into their journal article the details of how they obtained funding, navigated the bureaucracy to win support, or cleverly acquired a piece of new equipment, it would no doubt get edited out. This is a reason Roald Hoffmann in his book, The Philosophy, Art, and Science of Chemistry (Oxford University Press, 2012), suggested a new kind of science journal allowing first person “voice” and personal experience. Actually, it would only be “new” in the “retro” sense that “everything old is new again.” In the early days of modern science, personal autobiographical expression, musings and miscellany were common. These early science articles could be confusingly messy and hard to decipher, perhaps harking back to the deliberately obscure days of alchemy. However, personal observation and experience was handled well by agricultural researchers in the early 20th century. Which is not meant to denigrate the utility and immense value of standardized journal formats with introduction, methodology, results, discussion, etc. There is room in the world for both.

Untold Stories embeds science in a wider human context, beyond what is possible in the modern journal format, which necessarily excludes the human dimension, but leaves behind an unintended residue, a subjective impression of a science rendered lifeless by the invisibility of its practitioners. Cook family members pitched in to write the forward, edit, design and deliver their father’s book ready for printing by the American Phytopathological Society (APS) Press. Cook’s attitude towards public service is refreshing, and clearly extended into his so-called retirement. Judging from the 2005 start date and the 2017 book publication date, Dr. Cook put over a decade into this “Magnum Opus” book project. Wife and family were promised this would absolutely be his last book. One might lament, but I have to believe Dr. Cook mined his past experiences so thoroughly as to be able to rest on his laurels and not feel that much was left out that could not be remedied in a few journal articles.

A mathematical ratio of untold stories to published stories would be interesting, and Dr. Cook is in a position to be the expert. Let’s say the Untold Stories:Published Stories ratio was 1:1 and had a certain “volume.” Then the “volume” (e.g. measured in pages, articles/books, person-years of work, or whatever) of untold stories could be multiplied by the number of scientists or the amount published in a given time period to yield an estimate of how much scientific research ends up in the proverbial trash bin.

The Untold Stories photo caption on page 52 brought to mind a much maligned molecule, methyl bromide, a research tool and experimental control integral to scientific investigation of naturally disease suppressive wheat soils. Salt marsh microbes naturally produce methyl bromide as an antibiotic type weapon in waging ecological warfare for survival against competitors and antagonists. The caption: “A discussion session in progress at a Pacific Coast Research Conference on Soil Fungi with Professor S.D. Garrett, Cambridge University, as the discussion leader…Steve Wilhelm from UC Berkeley, credited with the introduction of soil fumigation to the California strawberry industry, is in the front row…”

Dr. Wilhelm, who I knew to also be interested in promising methyl bromide alternatives such as steam, marigold cover crops and green manures, crops up again on page 186 of Cook’s book: “it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that soil fumigation was used on a large scale…Steve Wilhelm at UC Berkeley…together with Albert Paulus at UC Riverside, did the pioneering work on the use of mixtures of chloropicrin and methyl bromide to control soil-borne pathogens and weeds before planting strawberries in California starting in the late 1950s. Strawberry yields were roughly 5 tons per acre in fields not fumigated and up to 25 tons per acre in fields that were fumigated.”

Soil fumigation with methyl bromide and chloropicrin worked so well that California had near zero untreated strawberry fields available to investigate for naturally suppressive soils, which is unfortunate, as methyl bromide use is being phased out under the Montreal Protocol as an ozone depleting substance. Something I learned about in more depth working with the late Jamie Liebman, a plant pathologist at BIRC (Bio-Integral Research Center), where as subcontractors we helped develop a Montreal Protocol methyl bromide alternative research agenda for funding by the U.S. EPA and United Nations. I wrote a short chapter on this period in history titled “Rowland’s Recipe for Climate Treaty Success” in an ABC-CLIO book titled Science and Political Controversy, edited by David E. Newton in 2014. In 2015, attending agricultural, soil and entomological science meetings in Minneapolis, not far from APS headquarters, I was pleased to find that research agenda still extant and going deeper. Funny what a mere photo caption can trigger in human memory. No doubt Untold Stories will have similar effects on readers whose interests and paths intersected with those of Dr. Cook.

California’s $2 billion strawberry industry, which produces about 90% of the USA crop, an awesome 1.7 billion pounds on about 40,000 acres (43,000 pounds of strawberries per acre), was for all practical purposes birthed into existence by injecting chloropicrin and methyl bromide into soils under plastic tarps. California’s hyper-productive strawberry growers, like Florida tomato and inland Pacific Northwest potato growers, can earn back methyl bromide soil fumigation costs. Family wheat farms would be bankrupted and abandoned to tumbleweed and erosion by soil fumigation costs. Scientifically, the less prosperous economics of wheat growing were fortuitous, as Dr. Cook was precluded from earning a living testing and recommending soil pesticides. Instead, as Dr. Cook’s book rigorously details, applied science became indistinguishable from pure science (much as it did for Pasteur) as it delved into the microbiology, ecology and non-chemical remedies for soil pathogens causing unhealthy plants and crop failures.

A key scientific discovery was that growing wheat in the same field again and again, year after year without interruption or rotation, can result in soils becoming naturally suppressive or functionally immune to disease pathogens. But this goes against centuries of accumulated wisdom arguing that toxic root secretions (allelopathy) poison the soil, and are best alleviated by crop rotations. Cook’s objection on page 227: “this makes no mention of a role for root diseases and ignores one of the most fundamental principles of plant pathology taught to beginning students in plant pathology, that growing the same crop in the same soil increases the populations of pathogens of the roots of that crop…It takes a long time to replace the first explanation with the correct explanation for almost any phenomenon in nature.” It also takes time, as those who have studied ecology know, for pathogen, prey or pest populations to build up to peaks before predator and natural enemy populations reduce or crash them down to low levels. Dr. Cook’s mission was to shorten that time.

One set of wheat experiments described in the “Take-All Decline” chapter 7, owed inspiration to 1950s’ potato scab disease research in Washington State, where small amounts (10%) of suppressive soil (presumably containing beneficial microbes) were added to disease-susceptible soils. Within 2-3 years, wheat soils were growing healthy plants. “Although I never repeated this experiment (nor did it need to be repeated), it would turn out to be the most influential experiment of my career,” wrote Dr. Cook on page 144. “It led to my award of a Guggenheim Fellowship…to my first competitive grant awarded by the USDA Competitive Grants Research Office (CARGO) in 1978…to the USDA ARS approving the formation of the Root Disease and Biological Control Research Unit in 1984; and to the USDA ARS providing permanent funds for me to hire…”

This only scratches the surface of a truly remarkable book likely to become a classic of science.

Insect Perceptions, Irrelevant or Important

“IT WAS THE BUTTERFLIES, my people say, who brought the first human babies to their feet,” writes Canadian Richard Wagamese in “Butterflies Teachings,” an essay touching on “what’s called Enendamowin, or Ojibway worldview” in his brilliant collection, One Native Life. “Before that, the New Ones sat in innocence beneath a tree, watching the world around them with wonder. But Creator had planned more for them. Their destiny called for them to move throughout the world. These human babies were meant to walk upon their two legs, and as long as they sat under that tree their destiny could not be fulfilled…The air seemed to tremble with butterflies. The human babies were entranced. Each time they tried to snare a handful of colour, the cloud drifted away. They stretched their arms higher. They thrust out their hands. But it was to no avail. When the butterflies danced just out of reach a final time, the New Ones lurched to their feet and raced after them across the meadow. The Animal People celebrated quietly, then returned to their dens and burrows and nests. The human babies never caught those butterflies, but they kept on running, right into the face of their destiny…”

Quite a different worldview from Prague and Eastern Europe, where Franz Kafka’s famous novel Metamorphosis begins: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” According to the “wall notes” in the exhibit “Disguise: Masks & Global African Art” at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Kafka’s words inspired South Africa artist Walter Oltmann. Among neon masks, dancing mask videos and sculptured African animals wearing masks are Oltmann’s large anodized aluminum and brass wire caterpillars in the midst of “transformation and change” (metamorphosis) and fashion sketches titled “Beetles & Suits.” The suit coats are gracefully curving, shell-like beetle elytra (outer wing covers) fashionably topped off with the latest antennae, and looking both business-like and sci-fi out of Star Wars or Star Trek at the same time. I can easily imagine a cell phone age makeover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band regalia and long hair with “beetle suits” and high-fashion antennae. Perhaps too much entomology affects the psyche. Oltmann writes that “spending an inordinate amount of time on making something that is usually considered insignificant like an insect, does make us look differently at them.” He says it “speaks of neither this nor that,” but I’m not so sure.

Insect observations appear in haiku by Japanese master Matsuo Basho, whom I think of as the late 1600s slightly more refined counterpart of 20th century Los Angeles poet Charles Bukowski, who was too busy with “other interests” to notice beetles, flies, mosquitoes and roadside weeds. In Moon Woke Me Up Nine Times: Selected Haiku of Basho, translator David Young writes: “Odd numbers predominate; a dance is occurring, and each third of the poem is a turn, a gesture, a refining or revelation… The poem seems to end almost as soon as it has begun, a small flash of lightning…A more literal version of the haiku cited (below) would be something like: What can save your life? / one leaf, with an insect / sleeping on its journey… the journey, which refers to a Chinese story that Basho’s readers would know but that is largely meaningless to English readers…‘Basho mash-ups,’ I have sometimes called my versions”:

One insect
asleep on a leaf
can save your life

Perhaps Basho was thinking of medicinal silkworms slumbering on mulberry leaves, or perhaps his mind was journeying among high mountains where ghost moths metamorphose with fungi into plant-animal hybrids that have been used in Asian medicine for centuries. David Young says about haiku: “They love to startle, first the writer and then the reader. As though a hummingbird were to land suddenly on your resting arm. It is the way the world so often surprises us.”

A haiku by Los Angeleno Mark Jun Poulos, whose observation of the seemingly mundane urban habitat nagged at me long after I thought I had dismissed its ordinary elements from consciousness:

restroom sink-—
ladybug cooling off
in a drop of water

What nagged at me was water, a vital ingredient of life, which as hard sprays of rain washes away pesky mites and aphids that are ladybug prey. Water (H2O) is also a missing ingredient in most ecological studies of interplanting, a habitat diversity strategy designed to boost populations of lady beetles and other beneficial insects providing natural pest control. Australian grape vineyards and California lettuce fields have had some success interplanting blooming rows of sweet alyssum to provide pollen, nectar and alternative prey for ladybugs, lacewings, hover flies and other beneficial species consuming aphids and other pests. Sweet alyssum is also host to micro-wasps helping Michigan asparagus growers by parasitizing leafmining pest insects, Amanda Buchanan of Michigan State University reported at the Entomological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting in Minneapolis. But if habitats are missing water, then perhaps lady beetles, which do not puncture plants to drink fluid, will leave to find restroom sinks, puddles or other water sources. Perhaps, like providing water bowls for pets, something similar needs to be researched as part of biological control habitat alternatives. Though I would draw the line at alcoholic drinks, except perhaps beer in snail and slug traps. Another urban haiku observation by Mark Jun Poulos:

sultry afternoon—
wasp hovers over a whiskey bottle
held by a drunk bum

Ethanol or ethyl alcohol, by percentage the main chemical component of distilled whiskey, should not be abused, nor perhaps should it be so heavily subsidized as a biofuel, as that incentive exacerbates huge landscape changes measurable as reduced biodiversity. At Synergies in Science, a rare Minneapolis gathering of the ESA, American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America, the diminishing biodiversity of a Midwest USA with 21% less wheat, 16% less hay and much more GMO corn to distill into ethanol motor fuels was as hard to ignore as a drunk with a whiskey bottle on an urban bench. Jonathan Lundgren of the USDA-ARS in Brookings, South Dakota said we need to get away from our “very pest-centric approach” and adopt a more holistic biological network approach. Instead of a Midwest saturated with pesticides to grow GMO corn to distill into fuel tank ethanol, something as seemingly simple as adding biodiversity via cover crops amongst the corn rows could produce enough soil biocontrol of corn rootworm to eliminate wasteful neonicotinoid seed treatments whose honey bee and beneficial insect friendliness is being hotly debated. Karen Friley of Kentucky State University reported at the ESA that something as seemingly simple as native plant border rows around sweet corn fields “provide microclimates in the form of moderated temperatures, which offer shelter” for numerous natural enemies controlling corn pests.

Curiously enough, ethanol (alcohol) like that in whiskey bottles and vehicle fuels also attracts pine beetles and ambrosia beetles considered destructive forest, landscape, street tree and nursery pests. Perhaps more curiously, the very trees being attacked are producing the ethanol and releasing it into the atmosphere when stressed (e.g. by drought or flood), decaying or dying. Trees may look perfectly healthy on the outside, but inside the tree is another story, because ethanol emissions are signs of sickliness and ill health. Chemical ecologist Christopher Ranger of the USDA-ARS in Wooster, Ohio said it is a real problem, for example, when nursery seedlings are used to replant spruce forests or with dogwoods, magnolias, pines, etc. in nurseries, backyards, along streets, etc. It is definitely ecology, as the ethanol is luring in the beetles to help “recycle” the trees back into the soil as nutrients.

I liked Ranger’s reasoning: Find the tree equivalent of driver breathalyzer tests as a beetle-attack early warning system. SCRAM wrist bracelets worn by offenders for transdermal drug and alcohol detection were tested, but were not sensitive enough; taking a week to detect low tree ethanol exhalations, whereas beetles detect a few parts per million of alcohol and get to trees almost on day one. The solution was a portable ethanol monitoring device with a detector tube and a plunger to pull in air samples; developed using Japan’s Gas Tech industrial gas leak detection technology for quick detection of “inebriated” trees.

So, which is more startling and surprising: art, haiku or entomology?

Strange brew: September 17, 2015 daylight turning to dark, caught in one of those infamous, almost proverbial L.A. traffic jams at a freeway underpass on Church Lane transitioning from Sunset Blvd to Sepulveda Pass on my way past the Getty Museum to Mulholland Drive, listening to the Moody Blues Live at Red Rocks, going nowhere. Haiku and fireflies flashing internally, and externally the blinking side turn lites and red back brake lights suddenly and surprisingly metmorphosed into synchronous fireflies, albeit of a mechanical or robotic nature:

Tail and Turn Lights
Flashing like Synchronous Fireflies
In the Los Angeles Traffic Jam

 

Cholera Biocontrol (vaccines & antibiotics are insufficient)

CHOLERA, a VIRULENT, SOMETIMES lethal version of Montezuma’s Revenge, the diarrheal gut scourge bane of travelers, is commonly associated with pesky Vibrio bacteria; though similar symptoms are associated with the sometimes disease-causing and sometimes beneficial E. coli gut bacterium and many other intestinal tract microbes. Cholera is commonly controlled by an integrated management approach, often including proper sewage sanitation, water filtration, antibiotics, vaccines, rehydration therapy and the fortuitous presence of natural enemies known as phages.

Phages, short for bacteriophages, are ‘bacteria-eating’ viruses; the name phage is from the Greek word ‘phagein’, which means ‘to eat’. One might think of cholera as being like the black plague, a no longer relevant disease of the past. But a recent Google News search indicates lethal cholera outbreaks worldwide: From 54 dead in one month in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to Rwanda and Nigeria in Africa to Iraq in the Middle East and Haiti in the Americas; with worries about outbreaks in refugee camps worldwide where wars rage and after natural disasters such as earthquakes destroy sanitary infrastructure. In Iraq, “The epidemic is concentrated in the town of Abu Ghraib, situated about 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of the capital, Baghdad, where cholera has claimed at least 10 lives,” according to Iran’s Press TV. “Health Ministry spokesman Rifaq al-Araji has blamed the cholera epidemic in Iraq on low water levels in the Euphrates, noting that simmering temperatures during summer months may have activated the bacterium that causes the deadly disease…Cholera is an acute intestinal infection caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. It is a fast-developing infection that causes diarrhea, which can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death if treatment is not promptly provided.”

According to a “Major Article” in THE JOURNAL OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES: “Vibrio cholerae serogroup O1 and O139 organisms cause acute, watery diarrhea, with an estimated 100, 000–150, 000 deaths annually…Despite global efforts to improve drinking water quality and sanitation in developing countries, there has been little evidence of a decline in the global burden of cholera in recent years. Interest has therefore increased in the use of cholera vaccines as adjuncts to other preventive and therapeutic measures…Live oral cholera vaccines have the theoretical advantage of simulating infection by natural cholera. Experimental infection of North American volunteers has been shown to protect against cholera upon rechallenge…However, to date no live oral vaccine has conferred protection to cholera-endemic populations when tested in a randomized trial, suggesting that the predictions from studies of volunteers lacking preexisting immunity to cholera may not be readily generalizable to cholera-endemic populations.”

According to the United Nations News Centre: “A global stockpile of vaccines, funded by a number of international organizations and foundations, initially made 2 million doses of the vaccine available. In 2015, with additional funding from the GAVI Alliance, the number of doses available for use in both endemic hotspots and emergency situations is expected to rise to around 3 million. There are several examples in which the vaccine has stopped cholera outbreaks in their tracks, such as in South Sudan in 2014…But new outbreaks are ongoing in South Sudan and Tanzania” in 2015, indicating vaccines to produce natural immunity in conjunction with the best that can be done in the way of sanitation and clean water supplies is not enough. Using phages to produce natural biological control of the cholera bacterium, as part of a low-cost, integrated pest management approach, seems to have been totally and completely neglected, almost as if the successes of natural biocontrol of disease bacteria with phages from the years 1917 into the 1930s and continuing into the present in some parts of the world have been totally purged from the Western medical and public health history books. A costly neglect, in terms of human lives.

“Cholera generated as much horror and revulsion among Europeans as bubonic plague had before it, in part because of the blue-black shriveled appearance of its victims and in part because it could strike anyone without warning and kill in 4 to 6 hours,” according to an overview in Microbiological Reviews which implicated “sailors and colonists” in cholera’s global spread, not just poor sanitation (mixing sewage into drinking water supplies). “Although cholera is treatable with antibiotics and oral rehydration therapy (fluid and electrolyte replacement), it is nevertheless an extremely debilitating and sometimes fatal disease. The severe dehydration and cramps symptomatic of the disease are a consequence of the rapid, extreme loss of fluid and electrolytes during the course of the infection. The diarrhea is caused by the action of cholera toxin (CT), secreted by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, although in some cases it may be caused by the related Escherichia coli heat-labile enterotoxin (LT).”

Historically, as mentioned in a previous blog post titled “Compost for Sustainable Soil Fertility & Disease Suppression,” Japanese cities adopted a more sustainable approach and thereby escaped the cholera epidemics afflicting London, Paris, India, the rest of Asia and the Americas: “Human waste, euphemistically called night soil, became a valuable soil fertility commodity in old Japan. Perhaps not quite worth its weight in gold, but a valuable commodity bought, sold, traded, and transported long distances from cities to farms. Rather than causing cholera and other diseases by entering the water supply as was common in European cities of the same era, sanitation and composting blessed Japan with multiple dividends…Farmers in old Japan spent their own money to build toilets and urinals along well-traveled roads for public use…” No doubt phages were also part of the integrated mix of methods providing natural biological control of cholera in old Japan, even if the invisibly small phages went unrecognized.

The 20th century use of phages for biological control of cholera and other disease bacteria was pioneered by the self-taught, French-Canadian microbiologist Felix d’Herelle, whose phage work was said by many to also be the foundation for modern molecular biology. An itinerant or journeyman scientist, who spent his life much like the modern-day post-doc, migrating from job to job around the world as he promoted phage therapy, d’Herelle was working with the Pasteur Institute in Paris while French and German troops were lining up against each other on the Western Front in World War I. In North Africa, as early as 1910, d’Herelle was pioneering the use of microbes to control biblical style locust plagues in North Africa, when he first noticed something killing the microbes used to kill the locusts; in other words, a complex ecosystem in which a higher level of natural enemies killed the lower-level natural enemies providing biological locust control.

During a World War I Paris dysentery outbreak, d’Herelle deduced that some patients were benefiting from phages invisibly providing biological control of the disease microbes. D’Herelle’s 1917 article on the subject for the French Academie des Sciences was titled “Sur un microbe invisible antagonistic des bacilles dysenterique” (“On an Invisible Microbe Antagonistic to Dysentery Bacteria”). “D’Herelle claimed that the antagonistic principle was filterable, living and organized, and hence a microbe,” wrote medical historian Ton Van Helvoort. D’Herelle “thought the living nature of the principle was proved by the possibility of transmitting it in a series of cultures of dysentery bacilli.”

Albert Einstein, who won a Nobel Prize for proving unseen forces and counter-intuitive phenomena based on mathematical constructs, agreed with d’Herelle. “The statistical explanation, which d’Herelle argued intuitively, is based on the properties of sampling that can be described by the mathematical expression known as the Poisson distribution,” wrote William Summers in his book, Felix d’Herelle and the Origins of Molecular Biology. “D’Herelle bolstered not only this argument but his own status with his well-known footnote giving Einstein’s opinion of this experiment: ‘In discussing this question with my colleague, Professor Einstein, he told me, as a physicist, he would consider this experiment as demonstrating the discontinuity of the bacteriophage. I was very glad to see how this deservedly-famous mathematician evaluated my experimental demonstration, for I do not believe that there are a great many biological experiments whose nature satisfies a physicist’…Since we have now presented the evidence proving the corpuscular nature of the bacteriophage we will no longer make use of such vague expressions as bacteriophage ‘liquid,’ ‘Fluid,’ or ‘filtrate,’ but will employ instead the more precise term’…The validity of the plaque counting assay and corpuscular nature of phage, however, would remain controversial and divide phage workers into two camps until the early 1940s.”

“The bacteriophage phenomenon was the observation that an abundant and therefore cloudy bacterial culture lysed within a short time to a clear solution under the influence of a filterable lytic ‘principle’,” wrote medical historian Ton van Helvoort. “The interpretation of this phenomenon gave rise to two main opposing positions, represented by Felix d’Herelle and Jules Bordet, who clashed heavily. In 1917, d’Herelle proposed the term “bacteriophage” for the lytic principle and was convinced it was to be characterized as a filterable virus which could lyse the bacterial culture. Therefore, this lysis was a virus disease of the bacteria which he named bacteriophagy. In the 1920s this interpretation was severely criticized by, among others, the bacteriologist and serologist Jules Bordet, who received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1919. Bordet’s view was that bacteriophagy was linked with the metabolism of the bacterium, while the involvement of a virus was rejected.” The dispute morphed into a personal vendetta against d’Herelle, whose strong personality was perhaps hated as much as his phage theories and his views on the dangers of vaccination that were considered heretical by the era’s Nobel Prize-winning immunologists.

According to medical historian Dottore Emiliano Fruciano: “In presenting his concepts to the scientific and world community, d’Herelle connected his phage interventions to a theoretical system that clashed with those held by institutional medical science. d’Herelle thought that the reason for natural recovery was not the humoral and cellular mechanisms activated by the immune system, but rather the presence of a virulent phage for the pathogenic bacterium in the host. His observations led him to believe that phage was a common guest of every organism from man to silkworm…d’Herelle concluded that phage was the exogenous agent of natural recovery, leading to ‘spontaneous recovery’…

“Recovery was a case of the prevalence of phage over the bacterium, and death was a case of the prevalence of bacterium over phage,” wrote Fruciano. “Furthermore, d’Herelle hypothesized that phage was able to spread among ill people, mainly via stool; thus, a lack of hygiene, while contributing to infection, would also lead to recovery; phage would have been the reason for the end of epidemics. This characteristic made phage, the recovery agent, transmissible between individuals, just like the agent of disease…

“In support of his theory of natural recovery, d’Herelle cited exemplary phenomena, including recovery following exposure to cholera. In cholera, patients generally convalesced after two or three days (sometimes within 12 hours) of initial symptoms; even ‘artificial’ recoveries through phage therapy often occurred after 24 hours. However, according to d’Herelle, observations from many animal diseases had demonstrated that it took many more days for immunity to become effective in the fight against infection. To explain natural recovery through the mechanisms of immunity was not possible because of the timing.

“Moreover, in diseases such as typhus and plague, which are characterized by strong immunity, relapses were possible during convalescence. This would mean that the patient, although convalescing, was still not immune. In these kinds of pathologies, typically typhus and plague, immunity usually lasts forever, yet immunity only comes into play 20 days following convalescence. According to d’Herelle, ‘Immunity, far from being the cause of recovery, is a consequence of recovery’. Further confirmation of d’Herelle’s theory was given by the statistics of the three hospitals in Calcutta, India. Paradoxically, the lowest rate of mortality for cholera (27%) was recorded at the hospital for poor people, the Campbell Hospital, while the highest rate of mortality (86%) was recorded at a hospital for rich people, the European Hospital – a hospital recognized in 1926 for its wealthy patients and hygienic conditions. There were fewer deaths at the hospital where care and hygiene were poor, that is, where the possibility for the development and dissemination of virulent phage or the recovery agent were best.”

The cholera and phage biocontrol case in general became intolerably heretical to many in the scientific medical establishment, what with d’Herelle’s warnings against the dangers of conventional vaccinations and the radical challenge to conventional consensus medical theories supported by immunologists who had won Nobel Prizes in medicine, said Fruciano: “According to d’Herelle, immunity and recovery were two different processes; only after the bacteriolytic action of phage could immunity be developed. Furthermore, there were two kinds of immunity: heterologous immunity, linked to the presence of phage activity against the pathogen, and homologous immunity, linked to immune system activity.

“…man contracts cholera because his immune system is not able to neutralize the bacterium. In d’Herelle’s opinion, in the case of patients with cholera, recovery occurs because of the presence of a virulent phage for Vibrio cholerae as a result of heterologous immunity, not because of natural or homologous immunity. d’Herelle found that the administration of phage resulted not only in a quick recovery, but also lasting immunity. He also asserted that a suspension of phage had strong immunizing power (here in the traditional sense) because the bacterial substances dissolved by phage action induced immune system reactions… d’Herelle’s findings were contrary to the conclusions of Metchnikoff, Bordet and Ehrlich, the founders of immunology…phage therapy efficacy would have required a revision of the current explanation of natural recovery…In other words, the proof of efficacy of phage therapy was equivalent to the proof of the truthfulness of d’Herelle’s heretical theories. Thus, to verify the efficacy of phage therapy and prevention measures, the principles of modern medicine were at stake; this was a paradigm shift for the scientific community.”

Of course, in the early years of the 20th century, prior to the invention of the electron microscope to provide visual evidence, the immunologists could plausibly argue against the existence of phages (despite Einstein’s endorsement); and in the absence of modern genomics, indeed before DNA and RNA were implicated in heredity, matching the right mixture of phages with a particular disease bacterium was perhaps more art than science, an art in continuous successful practice in just a few places such as the ex-Soviet Republics of Georgia and Russia, and Poland. Also, early 20th century medical experiments are not considered rigorous by current standards. All of which makes the several hundred successful phage experiments and interventions against cholera, plague, typhus and other diseases subject to blanket dismissal; and, hence, the absence of natural biological control from Western medical practices, medical schools, and institutional research agendas.

“The following details some of the most sensational results in phage prophylaxis that would seem to contradict the eventual dismissal of d’Herelle’s works,” stated Fruciano. “In 1927, an epidemic of Asiatic cholera was halted at its start in several villages with 2000 to 3000 Punjabi inhabitants via two methods of phage prophylaxis delivery: the first was the addition of potent, individually dosed phage preparations, and the second was the administration of phage prophylaxis to local water supplies. In both scenarios, the epidemic was terminated within 48 hours; in the past, the same result was achieved through traditional interventions within a 26-day time period.

“…at the St Mary Hospital in London, England, where penicillin was first discovered, Himmelweit developed a cross-therapy involving a combination of phage and penicillin to reduce the possibility of penicillin-resistant bacteria. This solution was very promising…Above all, the conjoined administration of phage and penicillin gave positive outcomes in clinical trials. It is likely that this experimental solution worked well because, as it is known today, the mechanisms by which phage and penicillin kill bacteria are different. Unfortunately, this alternative use of phage, in combination with penicillin, has been abandoned. Why has this possibility been forgotten despite the fact that antibiotic-resistant bacteria appeared as soon as penicillin was introduced into medical practice?

“…Summers, a historian of medicine who delved deeply into d’Herelle’s scientific works, speaks of the “Soviet Taint” as a plausible reason for the lack of interest in phage as an antimicrobial agent. Following World War II, phage therapy research continued only in eastern European countries, and “d’Herelle’s Cure” became “Stalin’s Cure”. According to Summers, phage therapy and prophylactic measures became ideological symbols of divisions and disagreements between western and eastern countries, partially explaining the lack of interest in phage as an antibacterial agent in Western medical science.”

Organic Dairies Suck Flies (CowVac)

Rest assured, a CowVac is not a veterinary vaccine of some sort that magically provides insect control or renders cows autistic. Rather, it is about producing organic milk and organic milk products like butter and yogurt. A CowVac is a suction or vacuum device incorporated into a larger trapping apparatus that removes blood-sucking flies that can be an even worse livestock plague than mosquitoes or ticks. Besides being bad economics (too expensive), pesticides repeatedly applied at ever higher doses quickly select for pesticide-resistant biting flies; i.e the flies become immune. Which is not to say that insects will not develop some ingenious solution, like holding on tighter, to avoid being sucked up by strong suction. But at least development of stronger suction devices and better ways to knock insects off animals would not add pesticide residues to the environment, food chain and human diets. A human equivalent, awaiting invention, would be an enclosure of some sort designed to knockoff and suck up (vacuum off) bed bugs before they bite (see previous blog, on bed bug desperation time innovative research).

“Seven years in the making: The Cow-Vac removes horn flies from dairy cattle” was the title of a special display at a members symposium “Honoring the Career and Contributions of Veterinary Entomologist Donald A. Rutz” at the Entomological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting in the beer brewing capital of the world, Portland, Oregon. On its web site, the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh reports: “This innovative solution is now part of routine cattle management at the CEFS Dairy Unit and has allowed the herd to be insecticide-free for 5 years.” In other words, this “alternative fly management system” designed by Steve Denning and D. Wes Watson demonstrated “the feasibility of producing organic milk.”

“The trap removed between 1.3 and 2.5 million flies annually from the research station cattle,” Denning and Watson reported to the ESA in Portland. “Prior to the installation of the trap in 2007, the cattle routinely had horn fly populations above 1000 flies per animal and would require insecticide applications for horn fly control. With a vacuum trap in place, dairy cattle at CEFS have not required or have been treated with an insecticide.” With each of the thousand horn flies sucking blood 10-12 times per day, the blood loss and associated problems were huge (USA estimated losses are over $2.26 billion per year), and organic animal agriculture was considered questionable.

“The first walk-through pasture fly trap consisted of a covered structure designed to brush flies from the animals as they passed through, with the fleeing flies captured in the screened hollow walls,” reported Denning and Watson at the ESA meeting in Portland. “Modifications to the Bruce trap have been introduced over the years. These modified traps employ the same basic mode of action; curtains to dislodge flies and light, either natural or fluorescent, to attract flies to a cage, or bug zapper. In addition to curtains, the CowVac uses air pressure to dislodge flies, and vacuum to capture flies, trapping them in a chamber until death.” So far, the Animal Rights movement has yet to recognize a right to food (animal blood, in this case) for biting flies (also animals); and the flies die a natural death from lack of animal blood as a food source. Cruelty to animals (flies), perhaps; and fodder for an ethics debate. But if you want organic milk, butter, meat, yogurt, etc…

There are YouTube videos on the vacuum trap, and the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance has an in-depth article on the CowVac and its development by fly biocontrol specialist Tom Spalding of Spalding Labs: “…the Horn Fly is very tough to control. It’s resistant to most every chemical control. It only reproduces in cow pastures, which means there is always productive breeding material available as no one cleans up pasture pats…For the past 16 years, North Carolina State University entomologists, Dr. Wes Watson and Steve Denning, have been researching IPM practices for pest fly control for commercial livestock and poultry operations…They have seen it all, testing at least 100’s of products…repellent on most and only a few animals with pesticide, to using electric traps, light traps, walk thru traps, feed thru products, ear tags, oilers, you name it…in 2006 as Steve was watching flies get scrapped off cows going thru a walk in trap, and then following the cow out the exit and getting right back on, he had an AH HA moment of “let’s see if we could vacuum up those little buggers”…Organic Valley heard about this unit and they sponsored a test, placing 6 units on North Carolina dairies in 2012…we made a trip to Raleigh, NC to see it. I knew from our efforts using Fly Predators to control Horn Flies that this little insect was a big deal. It took a lot of work as you had to put the Fly Predators in the pastures where the cows has just been and that only worked for those doing intensive grazing. Harrowing or running a screen drag over the pastures made a big difference too, but all those things took more time than most dairymen had. If this vac thing worked it would solve a horrible problem every grazier has…We agreed to license the technology from NC State and so began the redesign for production and optimization. This is the second unlikely alignment of the stars. I run a beneficial insect company, but I’m a mechanical engineer (ME) by schooling and in the 30 years prior had started a number of high tech companies…we refined the airflow on real animals. While the simulated cow got us very close to optimized performance, we actually were blowing too much air…”

Whole Hog Into Debugging Michigan Apples

FROM TIME to TIME over the course of the centuries, agriculture seems to reinvent itself, and if anything modern agriculture based on the industrial model seems to be unconsciously integrating the higher animals back into the fruit tree groves, at least among those Michigan entomologists and farmers who appreciate the overlooked virtues of the hog as a faithful human servant at the beck and command of its handlers for hunting down pests that have become resistant to pesticides and difficult to control even with the latest pheromone mating disruption technologies. To those combating or hunting down feral pigs and wild boar disrupting native ecosystems and rooting up farm crops, turning pigs loose in apple, cherry, pear and other fruit tree orchards is likely to seem a heretical notion belonging to renegade rednecks or radical hippie farmers from the counterculture past stuck in a continuous time-warp loop with Spock and the characters from Star Trek.

One of the advantages of attending Entomological Society of America meetings is being able to follow themes like “livestock-crop reintegration,” which Ceres Trust Research Grants have been funding for Michigan State University entomologists like Krista Buehrer and Matthew Grieshop. Basically, organic hogs provide organic fruit orchards control of weeds and insect pests like plum curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar), codling moth (Cydia pomonella) and Oriental fruit moth (Grapholita molesta). “The rotation of hogs through different pastures and orchards with supplemental nutrition sources” is also “a method of livestock-crop integration that avoids the problem of adhering to National Organic Policy (NOP) and Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) policies restricting the application of manure prior to harvest,” wrote Buehrer in “Graduate Student Final Report – Ceres Trust Research Grant.”

Rotating organic hogs through organic fruit orchards to clean out weeds and insect pests hidden inside fallen fruits, traces its roots to Charles Valentine Riley, who pioneered modern biological control in the orange orchards of Los Angeles, California. In his 1871 “Third Annual Report on the Noxious, Beneficial and other Insects of the State of Missouri,” Riley said that for apple curculio “the only real remedy is the destruction of infested fruit.” In 1890, writing in the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin, C.P. Gillette suggested grazing orchards with sheep or hogs to eat the insect-infested “windfallen fruit” on the orchard floor and thereby reduce pest populations.

From the 1800s into the Roaring Twenties, Iowa apple growers could not get rid of apple curculios by shaking the trees, cultivating the soil, pruning, or spraying arsenic pesticides, leading B.B. Fulton in 1925 and 1926 to test hog grazing on the “Apple Grove Orchards south of Mitchellville, Iowa.” Writing in the Journal of Agricultural Research in 1928, Fulton said: “The experiments with pasturing pigs were successful from a business standpoint. A cost account kept for the two years showed that this method of control was more than economical, for it actually netted a profit. In 1925 each pig returned a net profit of $10 above cost and feed and in 1926 a net profit of $7.65…five pigs per acre can, if properly handled, clean up the early dropped apples in an orchard and thus control the apple curculio. The critical time for such control, as shown by the seasonal history data, is from the middle of June until about the middle of July. Pigs weighing about 100 pounds are the best size for this purpose since they do not tramp down the low branches. They do not feed from the trees…”

Krista Buehrer told the 2012 ESA Annual meeting in Austin, Texas that weekly rotations (June-August) of grazing hogs eating dropped fruit (containing pests inside) on the orchard floor produced marketable organic hogs and reduced pests without harming earthworms or beneficial insects (e.g. lady beetles, lacewings, ground beetles, spiders, parasitoid wasps, tachinid flies, syrphid flies, dolichopodid flies, ants). ““There were 3 control plots and 3 hog grazed plots,” said Buehrer. “Grazed plots were bordered by electric fencing to prevent hogs from escaping. Twenty-four Berkshire hogs were rotated through each grazed plot twice. In 2012, they were in each plot for 1.5 weeks per rotation, for a total of 3 weeks per grazed plot. In 2013 they were in each plot for 1 week per rotation, for a total of 2 weeks per grazed plot. Hogs ranged from 50-90 lbs (23-41 kg) each.”

Hog grazing really only scratches the surface of changing fruit orchard floor management, which includes cover crops, living mulches, composts, etc. Perhaps it is more a case of everything old becoming new again, as grazing by cattle, sheep, goats, wild pigs and boar are considered part of traditional European agroforestry systems.

Doggone Birds (Fruit Protection)

Many bird species provide biocontrol by eating a wide range of insect pests, and are worth encouraging for controlling flies, mosquitoes, locusts, caterpillars, ticks, rodents and other pests around homes, forests, farms and gardens. Other bird species are considered pestiferous when feeding on our food plants, and can be repelled in various ways, including by loud noises, eyespot balloons, reflecting tape, scarecrows and scare devices, sensor networks and dogs.

Among the beneficial birds when they are not causing damage to utility poles or annoying people with their racket are woodpeckers. Personally, I like hearing woodpeckers working urban and forest trees, and was heartened to learn from Michigan State University’s Andrew Tluczek’s presentation to the Entomological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting that: “Woodpecker predation has caused up to 90% mortality of emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) larvae in some sites.”

A 2006 tick control article in BioScience magazine devoted considerable discussion to birds for tick biocontrol. In Africa, birds known as oxpeckers (Buphagus spp.) provide biocontrol of ticks on mammals by consuming hundreds of adult ticks or thousands of nymphal ticks per day. Free-ranging guinea fowl experimentally tested around New York (USA) lawns reduced adult blacklegged tick numbers; but unfortunately the smaller nymph stage blacklegged ticks transmitting Lyme disease apparently were missed and not stopped very well.

The list of bird benefits for biocontrol, like barn owls for rodent biocontrol in Israel, Palestine, Malaysia and elsewhere could go on and on.

“Bird damage situations throughout the world are similar, involving many of the same crops and genera of birds,” wrote John W. De Grazio a few decades ago in the <em>Proceedings of the 8th Vertebrate Pest Conference. Seed-eating red-winged blackbirds, ring-necked pheasants, sparrows, crows, doves, parrots, munias, queleas, weavers and waterfowl are sometimes pests of corn, rice, wheat, sorghum, sunflowers, almonds, pecans, peanuts, etc. Starlings, sparrows, finches, grackles, robins, parakeets, etc. consume grapes, blueberries, and other fruit in yards, vineyards and orchards.

Dogs are used in pest control for sniffing out termites and bed bugs, and the natural proclivity of some dog breeds to chase birds can be harnessed to keep birds from destroying fruit in orchards and vineyards. In researching a grant proposal to travel to and write about Japan, which I failed miserably to qualify for, my Internet research for the proposal took me to the Japanese Journal of Farm Work Research. Being one of a select 4% of the USA population to have worked in agriculture, the journal title intrigued me enough to browse through several years of tables of contents, where I came across an intriguing article title: “Protection of Citrus From Bird Damage by a Dog.”

Not reading Japanese, I had to rely on the visual diagrams and English summary by researchers Hiromichi Ichinokiyama and Masami Takeuchi at the Kinan Fruits Tree Laboratory and Mie Prefectural Science and Technology Promotion Center:

“Effectiveness of a dog (Canus lupus familiaris) for protecting citrus fruits from bird damage was investigated using a citrus orchard (5.8 a in area) in the harvest season. In Experiment 1, a Border collie shepherd (male) was tied to a wire extended along one side of the square orchard to allow him to run along the inner side of the orchard. This watchdog system was effective in reducing fruit damage by birds (mainly brown-eared bulbul) only in the citrus tree row nearest to the dog runway.”

However, the researchers had better success letting the dog run free in the orchard:

“In Experiment 2, the orchard was enclosed with a tall chain-link fence and the same dog was allowed to move freely in the orchard. In this case, he persevered in chasing birds until they flew away from the orchard. This watchdog system effectively reduced bird damage to citrus fruits all over the orchard, resulting in an increase in crop yield…Further study is needed on the optimum number of dogs released per unit orchard area and the effectiveness of the watchdog system in case when this bird control system is spread to all orchards in the citrus-growing area.”

Like Richard Feynman’s Nontoxic Ant Ferry, dogs chasing birds away from trees laden with fruit or nuts is more a proof-of-concept awaiting further development than a fully developed technology you can order on the Internet.

Thank you to the organizations and people who created and are advancing the Internet, as even finding this sort of information would have been nearly impossible a few decades ago. Amazing how this high-tech infrastructure can advance low-tech solutions like the old-fashioned four-legged, tail-wagging dog as a bird-chaser in service of better fruit harvests.

The Asian Invasion -Insects in Global Trade

NATURAL WOOD PRODUCTS are better than synthetic petrochemical plastics is a common refrain, almost a rallying cry for many who consider themselves “green,” organic, sustainable or environmentally correct. Thus, the fashionable zeal in some sectors of society to ban plastic shopping bags and allow wood-pulp paper bags. But what if being “green” and using natural materials like wood instead of synthetic petrochemical plastics led to deforestation and pestilence? That’s pretty much the world trade situation these days.

At first glance wood pallets, crates, dunnage, and packaging materials seem to be the low-cost, sustainable “green” alternative vis-a-vis more expensive, synthetic petrochemical plastics. But wood packing materials used in global trade have spread a pestilence of native Asian wood-boring beetles to new homes worldwide. The North American invasion by Asian wood-boring species of bark beetles, ambrosia beetles, and long-horned beetles were among the hot topics at the Entomological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting of Dec. 2010 in San Diego, California.

Since hitchhiking to North America from Asia in solid wood packing materials and being detected near Detroit, Michigan in 2002, the wood-boring emerald ash borer has killed an estimated 30 million ash trees in the northern United States and southern Canada. The remaining North American ash trees are threatened. Though Sara Tanis, whose Michigan State University work is on You Tube, reported at the ESA annual meeting that blue ash (Fraxinus quadrangulata) “can withstand infestation and continue to survive.”

Emerald ash borer control is now multinational, involving the U.S. states of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin plus the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The Asian wood-boring beetle invasion is so far along it might make little difference if world trade abandoned wood pallets, crates, dunnage, and packing materials.

“Control strategies are now shifting to how we can manage established populations in the longer term,” Shajahan Johny of the Canadian Forest Service Great Lakes Forestry Centre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, told the ESA. “One possibility is biological control, which is recognized as the most suitable long-term pest management strategy for invasive species.” Johny is looking at fungi in the genera Isaria and Paecilomyces attacking emerald ash borer in Ontario.

In Michigan and Ontario, Canada, the early emerald ash borer hot spots, woodpeckers can peck out up to half the wood-borers; which is good for the birds, but not stopping beetle movement to new trees. “In their native habitats, Agrilus (sci name of genus of 3,000 wood-boring beetles) populations are generally suppressed by a diverse group of natural enemies and/or host tree resistance, and rarely become serious pests,” said Jian Duan, Lead Scientist of the emerald ash borer biological control team at the USDA-ARS Beneficial Insects Introduction Research Unit in Newark, Delaware. The USDA has searched Russia, Mongolia, China, and South Korea to find specialized parasitoids that can be introduced to North America to hunt wood-boring beetle eggs concealed under loose bark and larvae hidden inside trees. The idea being to restore a natural ecological balance.

Asia has not been immune to wood-boring beetle outbreaks. “The mass mortality of oak trees (Japanese oak wilt) has recently increased explosively in Japan,” Masahiko Tokoro of the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute (FFPRI) in Ibaraki, Japan, told the ESA. The Japanese are using a Decoy Tree Method (patent pending). Trap trees are baited with an aggregation pheromone attracting the wood-boring oak ambrosia beetle (Platypus quercivorus). Ethanol (alcohol) is added to the mix, because it is emitted by unhealthy or stressed trees and attracts beetles.

“Oak trees survive when they have been inoculated with a fungicide against the pathogenic fungus (oak wilt) before being attacked,” said Tokoro. “The decoy trees are lethal to the beetles because the symbiotic fungi (i.e. the ambrosia) that the beetles feed on are killed by the fungicide.” Neighboring trees can be similarly protected.

Variations on this method called push-pull are being developed in the U.S. to protect nursery trees from exotic ambrosia beetles (Xylosandrus spp.), said Christopher Ranger of the USDA-ARS Application Technology Research Unit in Wooster, Ohio. Ethanol is injected into sweetbay magnolia trap trees to stimulate ambrosia beetle attack. Beetles are “pushed” out of trees being protected by application of a repellent compound such as verbenone (dispensers) or via commercial botanical repellents such as Armorex, Veggie Pharm, Cinnacure. Azatin or Eco-Trol.

Planet Moth

WITH 200,000 known species, Earth is almost Planet Moth. Only beetle species are more numerous. Moths have been denizens of Earth since prehistoric times, long before the ascent of man. Mostly nocturnal, secretive and nondescript, moths play a quiet ecological role, doing some vital pollination of plants and nourishing the food chain by feeding birds, bats, lizards, fish, frogs and many other critters.

Silkworm moths, domesticated as a crop on mulberry trees in China about 5,000 years ago, are famous in the textile industry. Clothes moths are infamous for feeding on garments, and have spurred herbal pest control innovations since ancient times. Humankind has sprayed billions of tons of synthetic pesticides against cotton bollworm moths, Indian meal moths, diamondback moths, cabbage loopers, leafrollers, leafminers, stemborers, codling moths, corn earworms, inchworms, armyworms, spruce budworms, gypsy moths and bagworms, to name but a few. However, alternatives like pheromones are becoming more widely used to monitor, trap, and confuse moths and prevent mating and egg laying (eggs hatch into caterpillars that eat, pupate and beget new moths).

Biocontrol by natural enemies, including birds, bats, toads, spiders and other insects, is part of the ancient planetary rhythm for controlling moths and maintaining global ecological balance. From Texas, Arizona, California and Mexico to China, Russia, Central America and Australia, microscopic Trichogramma wasps are among the most popular insectary-reared natural enemies released to stop moth egg hatching. Cotton growers escaping the pesticide treadmill have traditionally been big users of Trichogramma wasps. Tomatoes, corn, grapes, tree fruits, ornamental nurseries and many other crops also use Trichogramma, green lacewings and a wide array of other natural enemies purchased from Rincon-Vitova and other insectaries to lessen moth attacks and minimize pesticide use.

Of course, the moth wars are not all one-sided. Spray pesticides too often and moths become resistant. And moths can elude and make life challenging for their natural enemies. For example, many moth species respond to bat ultrasound echo-location signals with evasive aerial maneuvers and jamming signals. Moth immune systems may even encapsulate and prevent parasites from providing biocontrol. Each female of one fat Australian moth species can lay 18,000 eggs, the ultimate defense, essentially ensuring survival by sheer numbers.

Beneficials Sweet on Alyssum

INTERPLANTING SWEET alyssum (Lobularia maritima) is an excellent way to promote natural biocontrol of a wide array of landscape, orchard, field and garden pests like aphids, stinkbugs, leaf and fruit worm caterpillars, etc. Companion planting has ancient roots, figuring in the writings of the Greek Theophrastus in 300 B.C. and the Roman Pliny (Plinius Secundus) in 1 A.D. Though popular in organic gardening and farming, floral interplants escaped serious scientific scrutiny until recent years.

Australia’s wine grape growers are among those who take their sweet alyssum companion plantings very seriously. At Australia’s EH Graham Centre for Agricultural Innovation ecological engineers and entomologists like Geoff Gurr of Charles Sturt University are fine-tuning companion planting. Firstly, you need to choose companion interplants that supply nectar, shelter and other resources to beneficial predators and parasites but not to pest species.

The Aussies focused their scientific studies on a Trichogramma species parasitizing and destroying the eggs of the lightbrown apple moth (Epiphyas postvittana), a key pest of Australian vineyards. In “clean” vineyards where weeds and ground covers are destroyed by herbicides or cultivation, biocontrol species like Trichogramma may survive as few as two days, versus three days with water only and up to 20 days with sweet alyssum (the best ground cover tested). Alyssum flowers doubled the number of moth eggs parasitized over a 10 day period. In contrast, when the alyssum plants were deflowered the Trichogramma perished and there was little biocontrol.

But there is more to the story. “Not only is plant species important, but the cultivar within the species is critical,” Gurr told an Entomological Society of America annual meeting. For example, Trichogramma survive far longer on white-flowered alyssum cultivars compared to purple and other colors. Alyssum also boosted predators without aiding the apple moths, which was not the case for every ground cover interplant tested.

Most landscape and cropping systems have not been subjected to the same level of ecological and laboratory investigation as Australian wine grapes. Thus, Rincon-Vitova and other insectaries selling beneficial insects generally recommend blends of flowering plants supplying floral nectar throughout the season.

Beating the Bed Bug Blues

“SUCH BUGS and goblins in my life,” said Shakespeare’s Hamlet during the medieval era when “bug” meant bed bug. Indeed, bedbugs have been part of the human condition from prehistoric times. By 400 B.C. the ancient Greeks were scratching bedbug bites and singing the Big Bed Bug Blues. Bat caves, bird nests and animal barns are the natural habitats supporting bed bugs and their goblin-like natural enemies like itch mites, assassin bugs, assorted ants, centipedes, and spiders.

Though bedbug biocontrol by the currently-known crop of natural enemies seems better left to the Batcave and more rustic outdoorsy habitats, natural ecological principles still apply in human dwellings. Contrary to the DDT-nostalgia (interestingly, lacking scientific citations) infesting Wikipedia, pesticides cannot substitute for human smarts in fighting bedbugs. Even in the heyday of DDT bed bugs were hard to kill and there was pesticide resistance, Clemson University urban entomologist Eric Benson told an Entomological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting. Indeed, overdoing pesticides is likely to kill natural enemies and stimulate outbreaks of new indoor pests (e.g. rat mites).

An integrated pest management (IPM) approach pits human ingenuity and a multiplicity of tactics against bedbugs. Shripat Kamble of the University of Nebraska told an ESA annual meeting of traditional bedbug remedies rememebered from a childhood in India: “People commonly used in the summertime heat treatment. Keeping the cot outside in the hot sun,” and shaking the bed so the bugs spilled onto bare ground hot enough to kill. “Another treatment that was commonly done was boiling water, and then pouring boiling water through all the hiding areas of the bed bugs…A lot of times it worked, and sometimes we still had problems.”

Nobody, not even the professionals, has a surefire remedy guaranteed to work against bedbugs every time in every household. Like Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks, bedbugs are likely to remain a part of the modern human condition.