RI, MA EHS Pest Control Blog

Beer Goggles Affect Insects, Too

It was a case of beer, sex and mistaken identity.

A University of Toronto professor's research about the copulation patterns of male Australian jewel beetles with "stubby" beer bottles won him an Ig Nobel Prize, a parody of the prestigious award given to researchers whose findings will first make people laugh and then think.

The 2011 winners were presented the award at Harvard University on Thursday by actual Nobel Prize winners.

Darryl Gwynne of the U of T's Mississauga campus' ecology and evolutionary biology department was heralded for his 1983 paper "Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbies for Females."

"I'm honoured, I think," Gwynne said in a statement.

"The awards make people think, and they're a bit of a laugh. Really, we've been sitting here by the phone for the past 20-plus years waiting for the call. Why did it take them so long?" he asks.

Gwynne and Australian colleague David Rentz were conducting field work in Western Australia 23 years ago when they noticed something unusual along the side of the road.

"We were walking along a dirt road with the usual scattering of beer cans and bottles when we saw about six bottles with beetles on top or crawling up the side. It was clear the beetles were trying to mate with the bottles," he said.

The bottles — known as "stubbies" in Australia — resembled a "super female" jewel beetle that are big and orangey brown in colour, with a slightly dimpled surface near the bottom that reflects light in much the same way as female wings do.

Ignoring the actual female beetles, the males began mounting the beer bottles and attempted to mate with them to a perilous death — they fried under the hot sun and some were eaten by hungry ants.

Despite the humorous circumstances, Gwynne said the research had a serious message.

In this case, female beetles were ignored by the males which could impact the natural world.

"Improperly disposed of beer bottles not only present a physical and 'visual' hazard in the environment, but also could potentially cause great interference with the mating system of a beetle species," the paper said.

Gwynne also points out that the research supports the theory of sexual selection: that males, in their eagerness to mate, are the ones that make mating mistakes.

Gwynne conducted his research as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Western Australia in Nedlands. He joined U of T Mississauga in 1987.

The research was published in the journal of the Entomological Society of Australia and the U.K.-based journal, Antenna.

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA 

HELP!!!! MY ENTIRE GARAGE FLOOR IS CRAWLING WITH INSECTS!!!!

click image to enlarge

That was the frantic phone call we got into our office. I get there to do the inspection and the customer was right, there were a TRILLION insects all over the garage floor! What were they? Upon examining them they were grain beetles. Why in the garage? Now come the probing questions to the homeowner……Do you have bird seed stored here? NO. Dog food? NO. Grass seed? NO. Any type of food or seed? NO

Time to play Columbo and investigate the “crime scene”. Sure enough I see some beetles raining down from a shelf in the back of the garage. I move some items away and there it is, a 10LB box of dog biscuits! The husband confesses that he bought them at a big box store over a year prior because they had a deal on them. There were two boxes and they were so big and bulky that he stored one box in the garage and forgot about it. So I used my HEPA vacuum and physically removed all the beetles then treated the area and most importantly threw away the epically infested box of dog biscuits. Just look at all some of the beetles in the Ziploc bag and the damage they did to the bones.

Mike “Spike” McGoldrick
Service Supervisor
Environmental Health Services, Inc.

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA 

Grain Pest Intercepted at LA Airport

U.S. customs officials say they intercepted one of the world's most destructive agricultural pests during an inspection at Los Angeles International Airport.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says inspectors discovered the pest, known as the khapra beetle, in a bag of Indian rice on a flight from Saudi Arabia Dec. 29, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

The bag, being brought in by a passenger, was confiscated and destroyed.

The khapra beetle, a grain and seed pest, is particularly dangerous because it is tolerant to many insecticides, officials said.

"They're good at hiding and they multiply," Naveeda Mirza, the inspection agency's agriculture program manager, said. "Before you know it, half of your grain is gone."

California spent millions of dollars in the 1960s to eradicate an infestation of khapra beetles in the state, Mirza said.

Mirza urged international travelers to avoid packing food.

"Chocolate, candy, maybe that's OK," she said. "But beans and rice that you're bringing for your own consumption, it's better to just buy it here."

Source = Science News

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA