Title:

Which insects will respond to a novel tree-killing beetle pheromone?

The goal of my study is to identify the insects that respond to specific chemical signals in pine forests of New England. This is particularly meaningful as New England is home to the rare pitch pine barrens ecosystem, like those in Ossipee and Concord, New Hampshire. These pine barrens will one day be threatened by the southern pine beetle, which is able to survive further north due to warming winters. The southern pine beetle, or SPB, has the scientific name Dendroctonus frontalis, with Dendroctonus meaning “tree killers” in Greek. This name is fitting as the SPB, although individually smaller than a grain of rice, orchestrate mass-attacks of healthy pine trees. These attacks, carried out by thousands of beetles, can kill a tree in a matter of days. To coordinate the attacks, SPB produce and emit pheromones. These chemical signals draw not only other SPB, but other insects as well. These other insects are the focus of this chapter of my research—I want to know which insects respond to SPB pheromones in New England, where SPB has never been before. While SPB and its pheromones are novel in this region, other bark beetles (like those in the genus Ips) are common here. I will compare the insect community that responds to SPB pheromones and Ips pheromones, with tree defense chemicals as a control. I carried out the first field season of this study in summer 2020 at 16 sites across Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, and I present the methods and motivations that drive my work. This work will provide baseline knowledge of the regional insect species pools and will inform predictions about how the arrival of SPB in New England will impact our forests.

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