Biological Plant Pest Control
Neochetina eichhorniae was first introduced, as an herbivore agent for the biological control of water hyacinths, to Florida in the United States in 1972. Due to its successful reduction and control of the plant in the Everglades and other natural water systems there, it has subsequently been introduced in more U.S. states and other countries, such as in east African Lake Victoria as a powerful biological control agent.
Water hyacinth is a highly invasive species and has a tendency to cover and choke major waterways and lake surfaces, which can have numerous detrimental ecological, biological diversity, fisheries, hydroelectric, transportation, and economic results.
The adults produce characteristic feeding scars on the leaves and petioles. In the larval stage, the insect tunnels into the petioles and the crown of the plant. This feeding results in biotic stress, reduced flowers and seeds, and less vigorous growth.
Read more about this topic: Neochetina Eichhorniae
Famous quotes containing the words biological, plant, pest and/or control:
“In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other’s affairs, who “come out” together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“He who eats the fruit should at least plant the seed; ay, if possible, a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The pest of society is egotists. There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. ‘Tis a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Magic is the envelopment and coercion of the objective world by the ego; it is a dynamic subjectivism. Religion is the coercion of the ego by gods and spirits who are objectively conceived beings in control of nature and man.”
—Richard Chase (b. 1914)