USM Research on Garden Pests
Summer has finally arrived in Maine, and with the coming of warm weather the hornworm caterpillar will ravage our tomato plants that have just kicked into high gear after a cool spring. Woodchucks will also be devouring peas, beans, cabbages, and just about anything else they set their eyes on. Below are some USM faculty who research some of the pests Mainers keep tabs on.
Woodchucks:
Every spring over the last five years, Chris Maher, associate professor of biology, sets up a field station at Gilsland Farm in Falmouth to further her study of woodchucks. She’s hoping to learn more about territoriality, social organization, mating behavior, and the impact of parasites on their reproductive ability. This spring and summer, Maher, with the help of five students, will be implanting radio transmitters in the new crop of woodchuck pups to find out more about how they disperse from their birth nests. Do they leave home, when do they leave, and where do they settle? She also will be continuing to use genetic analysis to establish kinship patterns --how the woodchucks she studies are interrelated.
Maher, who has a Ph.D. in animal behavior, finds that returning to the same site year after year is paying off. The long-term research is yielding results that challenge earlier beliefs about the social life of woodchucks. Contrary to the prevailing view, Maher’s long-term data suggest that the pups don’t disperse far from home. They leave their home nest but settle close by. She’s also found, again challenging the previous understanding of woodchuck life, that males and females interact with each other outside of the breeding season and are quite tolerant of each other. She speculates that in the cases she has seen, the male may be the female’s mate and the father of her pups.
Editor’s Note: Maher can be reached by leaving a message at USM at 780-4612 since she is frequently in the field.
Tomato-Chomping Caterpillars:
David Champlin, assistant professor of biology, studies the bright blue-green, hornworm caterpillar that shows up in Maine gardens when tomatoes are in season.
Although pretty in color, these insects spell disaster for the tomato grower. They appear out of nowhere and devour tomato plants virtually overnight. Under ideal conditions, they can increase in size 10,000 times in just ten days. This potential for rapid growth is what makes them fascinating for Champlin to study.
Insect metamorphosis is controlled by a steroid hormone that stimulates cell division. "We use insect metamorphosis in my lab as a model to understand how steroid hormones control development," Champlin explains. His research on steroid receptors may yield information on how to to exploit insect hormones as pesticides, but it may also yield information relevant to rapid growing tissue in humans. His work may shed light on how cell growth can go awry, as in cancer and in fetal development leading to birth defects.
Editor’s Note: Champlin can be reached at 228-8349.
>more news releases
|
