red bay-ambrosia beetle

[John Paul Sanborn]

Recently the FDACS-Division of Plant Industry reported that red bay
mortality disease was found in Florida. Today it announced that the
ambrosia beetle associated with this disease was also found in
Jacksonville, a new state record.

Links to the state record report and the DPI Pest Alerts on the beetle
and red bay mortality are available on the UF/IFAS Pest Alert site.

The UF/IFAS Pest Alert WWW site is available at
http://pestalert.ifas.ufl.edu/ .

Instructions for subscribing and unsubscribing to
the UF/IFAS Pest Alert listserv are available on site.

-----

Bud Mayfield, forest entomologist with FDACS-Division of Forestry,
announced that the red bay mortality previously observed in South
Carolina and Georgia, is now in Duval County, Florida.

A link to the DPI Pest Alert, which includes detailed text and color
images, is available on the UF/IFAS Pest Alert site.

The UF/IFAS Pest Alert WWW site is available at
http://pestalert.ifas.ufl.edu/ .

Instructions for subscribing and unsubscribing to
the UF/IFAS Pest Alert listserv are available on site.


--
Thomas R. Fasulo
extension entomologist
University of Florida

 

[JeffE]

I was thinking about posting a thread about this. Bud Mayfield's my boss, we finally found the beetle on a trip on Oct. 4th.

It's been a pretty interesting (but convoluted) story, which I'll tell if y'all want to hear it!

Here's the recently-killed tree we finally found the little buggers in, with a good showing of the streaking from the vascular wilt fungus that seems to be involved. (And yours truly, debarking the portion where I eventually found the entrance holes.)

<img src="http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y208/eickwort/redbaystain2.jpg" alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">

If anyone finds an unusual number of redbay trees dying somewhere in Florida, especially along coastal northeast FL (except Ft. George Island and Big Talbot Island, where we're already studying it), I'd love to hear from you. (352) 372-3505 x.491 during business hours, or PM me.

P.S. Treeseer, this is that tree dissection I mentioned before.