July 7, 2004,
ARS News Service: A tiny mite that keeps a
troublesome weed, Old World climbing fern, in check
in Australia might be ideal for doing that same job
in Florida. The plant, known to scientists as Lygodium
microphyllum, has become the state's worst invasive
weed.
Agricultural Research Service entomologist John A.
Goolsby at the Australian Biological Control Laboratory
in Indooroopilly, near Brisbane, and colleagues there
have found—for the first time—climbing fern
plants in Australia that are an exact genetic match
of those in Florida. From those ferns, the researchers
collected the tan, eight-legged Floracarus perrepae
mites.
Not all populations of F. perrepae mites will feed
and reproduce on the Florida fern genotype, Goolsby's
team discovered.
Now, Goolsby and ARS entomologist Robert W. Pemberton,
who leads the agency's climbing fern research, are seeking
federal and state permissions to release the mites in
fern-infested Florida wetlands. Pemberton is based at
the ARS Invasive Plant Research Laboratory in Ft. Lauderdale,
Fla.
In recent years, Goolsby, Pemberton and their fellow
investigators have combed the globe in search of natural
enemies of the fern.
F. perrepae mites feed on and damage the edges of fern
leaves, called fronds. That causes the fronds to swell
and form tight curls that the mites then use for food
and shelter. The damaged frond tissue eventually falls
off, reducing the amount of frond surface that's available
to capture the light that the fern needs for making
its food.
In Florida, Old World climbing fern smothers native
plants by forming dense mats along the ground, and by
climbing, vine-like, up shrub stems and tree trunks,
creating massive walls of flammable, dark-green vegetation..
Read more about the research in the current issue of
Agricultural Research magazine, available online at:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/jul04/mite0704.htm |
