Hydrogen Isotopes as a Sentinel of Biological Invasion by the Japanese Beetle, Popillia japonica (Newman).

Invasive species alter ecosystems, threaten native and endangered species, and have negative economic impacts. Knowing where invading individuals are from and when they arrive to a new site can guide management. Here, we evaluated how well the stable hydrogen isotope composition (δ2H) records the recent origin and time since arrival of specimens of the invasive Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica Newman) captured near the Portland International Airport (Oregon, U.

A four-component synthetic attractant for Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophilidae) isolated from fermented bait headspace.

Background: A mixture of wine and vinegar is more attractive than wine or vinegar to spotted wing drosophila, Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura) (Diptera: Drosophilidae), and ethanol and acetic acid are considered key to that attractiveness. In addition to ethanol and acetic acid, 13 other wine and vinegar volatiles are antennally active to D. suzukii and might be involved in food finding.

Identification and field evaluation of fermentation volatiles from wine and vinegar that mediate attraction of spotted wing Drosophila, Drosophila suzukii.

Previous studies suggest that olfactory cues from damaged and fermented fruits play important roles in resource recognition of polyphagous spotted wing Drosophila flies (SWD), Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura) (Diptera: Drosophilidae). They are attracted to fermented sweet materials, such as decomposing fruits but also wines and vinegars, and to ubiquitous fermentation volatiles, such as acetic acid and ethanol. Gas chromatography coupled with electroantennographic detection (GC-EAD), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), two-choice laboratory bioassays, and field trapping experiments were used to identify volatile compounds from wine and vinegar that are involved in SWD attraction.

Predicting pathogen introduction: West Nile virus spread to Galáipagos.

Emerging infectious diseases are a key threat to conservation and public health, yet predicting and preventing their emergence is notoriously difficult. We devised a predictive model for the introduction of a zoonotic vector-borne pathogen by considering each of the pathways by which it may be introduced to a new area and comparing the relative risk of each pathway. This framework is an adaptation of pest introduction models and estimates the number of infectious individuals arriving in a location and the duration of their infectivity.