Science

Beetle abundance attributed to forest fires – The Sudbury Star

Published

4 years ago

July 5, 2020

White-spotted sawyers can bite, but won’t if you don’t bug them

A white-spotted sawyer beetle, also known locally as a pine beetle.

Postmedia file photo

Beetle-mania seems to be gripping Sudbury lately as numerous black bugs with hard wings and long antennae make their presence known — and occasionally felt.

These insects — casually referred to as pine or longhorned beetles, but properly known as white-spotted sawyers — are capable of delivering a nip, although it’s not really their nature to go looking for a fight, according to a forest entomologist.

“It’s not that they are aggressive and attacking people,” says Taylor Scarr, research director of integrated pest management with the Great Lakes Forestry Centre in Sault Ste. Marie.

“If you are a beetle on the side of a tree and a bird comes along to pick you off, the natural defence is to try to hold on with your feet and those strong mandibles,” he says. “So if you pick one up like a bird tries to pick them up, they grab your skin because that’s what they’re on, and to them they are on the trunk of a tree.”

Scarr says the beetles, distinguished by a white spot at the back of their necks, are native to Ontario and appear every year, but may be more conspicuous in Sudbury right now because of events that occurred a couple of years ago.

“Adults lay their eggs under the bark of recently dead or dying trees, and the grubs tunnel in there and come out two years afterwards,” he said. “So what we’re seeing now in the Sudbury area, I think, is all the beetles that have come out of trees that were killed in the Temagami and Parry Sound fires two years ago.”

A white-spotted sawyer beetle travels along the edge of a garage on St. Raphael Street in Sudbury.

Jim Moodie/Sudbury Star

He says beetles can travel a couple hundred kilometres to find a new food source, and those that emerged from the burnt-over areas would be quite plentiful, as the fires created a lot of good beetle habitat.

Sudburians might also be more aware of the beetles this year simply because “people are at home more” due to COVID-19, he suggests. “So they are seeing more.”

The adult beetles are about three-quarters of an inch long, sometimes as long as an inch, with antennae that can be three times as long as their bodies.

At this time of year the adults would be mating and dining on the bark of twigs in preparation for egg-laying.

“Before they lay their eggs, they do what is called maturation feeding, so they feed on the twigs of conifer trees,” says Scarr. “They need to feed on live twigs to mature the eggs.”

The bugs are awkward flyers, he notes, as they have two sets of wings. “They have hard wings that cover the abdomen and underneath that are the membraneous wings they actually fly with, so for that beetle to fly they have to lift the hard wings,” he says. “They’re cumbersome and it takes a lot of energy to fly, but they can certainly do it.”

Females have a more mottled appearance than the males, but “both have a single white spot at the base of the hard wings on the back, behind the head.”

People will sometimes confuse a female sawyer with an invasive Asian beetle, says Scarr, as both have long antennae and speckled backs, but the invader is “a bigger, more robust insect, with white markings that are much sharper.”

In China, the Asian beetle is sometimes called a “starry sky beetle,” he says, for its constellation of white spots.

Scarr says the intruder can hitchhike on wooden pallets and has been documented twice in Ontario — in the Toronto/Vaughn area in 2003, and a decade later in the Toronto/Mississauga area — but in both cases the Canadian Food Inspection Agency launched an aggressive eradication program and just last week announced that this strategy has proven successful.

Ontarians are still urged to keep an eye out for the foreign critters, however, as they can wreak much more havoc on local tree species.

“It’s a very serious pest because it likes hardwoods, and unlike the white-spotted sawyer beetle, it can attack and kill healthy trees,” says Scarr. “It has a real preference for maples, so if it were to get out and spread, it would devastate not only the hardwood industry but the maple syrup industry.”

Examples of the invasive beetle have been found recently in South Carolina, and it’s taken root in a few other U.S. states, as well as Europe, he notes.

Our homegrown sawyer beetle, meanwhile, is feared in Europe and Asia, as it carries a parasitic worm that can cause a wilt disease in their trees.

Tyler Cobb, curator of invertebrate zoology at the Royal Alberta Museum, holds a white-spotted sawyer beetle.

Larry Wong/Postmedia file photo

Here in Ontario, however, the sawyer doesn’t pose a big problem, although crews working in wildfire zones are not too keen on them. “They can drop down your shirt or coveralls while fighting a forest fire and be quite a nuisance,” notes Scarr.

In rare cases, they can also create an unpleasant shock for a homeowner who utilized air-dried lumber to frame their building.

“If the wood isn’t kiln-treated, sometimes the grubs will survive,” says Scarr. “I’ve had five or six reports where, three to four years after someone built their home, they had the beetles come out through the drywall.”

They can also be a problem at times for lumber companies if they infest trees intended for sawmills.

For the most part, though, the beetles are simply going about their business in the bush, contributing to regeneration by hastening the decomposition process.

“If a forest fire kills the trees, they can’t stand up forever and occupy the site,” says Scarr. “So the beetles come in and start to chew on the trees; fungi and other insects invade them; and eventually they rot and fall down and get replaced by something else.”

They also provide food to birds and other critters. Pileated woodpeckers, especially, seem to have a good nose — or more to the point, ear — for the grubs.

“They can hear them when they are inside a tree, just like we can, making a chewing noise,” the forest pest expert says.

The species in fact got its name for the grinding racket its teeth can make, like that of a saw passing through wood. (Sawyer, by the way, is pronounced like Tom Sawyer, the famous Mark Twain character.)

While many find the wood borers unappealing, Scarr encourages residents to try to “ignore them,” or at least tolerate them, as it won’t be long before they are done their mating and egg laying, at which point the adults begin to die off.

“You usually seem them around this time, in June and early July, but later in the summer you might just see the odd one,” he says.

In the meantime, “they don’t harm anything,” he says. “They’re just a natural part of the ecosystem.”

Anyone who has experienced the sensation of mandibles on skin may, of course, protest that “harm” is indeed something that can be inflicted by a sawyer beetle.

But even this isn’t apt to happen too often, Scarr maintains.

“I’ve handled lots and I have never been bitten,” he says. “You just have to grab them behind the head.”

jmoodie@postmedia.com

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Science

The body of a Ugandan Olympic athlete who was set on fire by her partner is received by family

Published

18 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.

Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.

She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.

Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.

“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.

It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.

Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.

Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.

Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.

“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.

He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.

Kenya’s high rates of violence against women have prompted marches by ordinary citizens in towns and cities this year.

Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.

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The ancient jar smashed by a 4-year-old is back on display at an Israeli museum after repair

Published

2 days ago

September 11, 2024

Anne Joseph

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.

Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.

Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.

The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.

The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.

It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.

Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.

Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.

Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.

Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.

Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.

The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”

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B.C. sets up a panel on bear deaths, will review conservation officer training

Published

4 days ago

September 10, 2024

Anne Joseph

VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.

Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”

Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.

“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.

B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.

Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.

Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.

Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.

“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”

Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”

“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.

Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.

“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.

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