i have been seeing these green things on utility poles all over lake and porter counties as i've been out surveying the crops and photographing seed signs and i had been wondering what they were...they resemble baited traps we used one year to trap japanese beetles ( do not do this...the pheromones in the traps we put up attracted all the beetles in the surrounding area to our yard, overwhelming the traps and leaving us with the neighborhood's largest infestation ) and traps are what they are...seems gypsy moths are on the move in indiana this year...where exactly i cannot say beyond infering that lake and porter counties are involved due to the presence of the traps...the map on the dnr website ("use this site for current and correct information") only shows quarantined counties up to 2000, so we may be under a usda quarantine...among other things that means if you are moving from a quarantined area to one that is not you are required to have your household goods checked for gypsy moth eggs prior to moving...bear that in mind if you're planning an exodus form the rust-belt to sunnier economic climes ( wherever those may be)...introduced accidentally in the boston area in 1868 or 69, the moths have been moving westward since pigging out on oak leaves or almost anything elese that they can find...the migration seems to be spasmotic and pilot populations in newly colonized areas seem to die out suddenly...small mamals, birds, fungus, and a specialized virus all can do them in before they reach a threshold for successful establishment in any given area...despite this they are still moving westward as well as south...nothing to do with climate change apparently...just ignorance one hundred and forty-one or forty-two years ago.
and by the way, i did not disturb the trap...i only photographed it...i do not how many gypsy moths were harmed.
2 comments:
I had seen those around and wondered what they were so thanks for filling me in...saw one of those moths on campus the other day but didn't know it was a bad critter! I remember as a kid when Dutch elm disease killed all the trees and it was so sad.
dutch elm disease did in all the elm trees (5) in my mother's back yard in the 70's...it was a much less inviting place until the locust trees i planted there grew enough to recover some of the canopy i remebered...i have two in the back jungle, but one was struck by lightening a few years ago and stopped growing upwards...it is more of an elm bush
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