Not sure if they are a big deal where you all live, but around here, they really put the hurt on our tress, and there are large-scale eradication programs in place. If you are driving around WV, you will see boxes attached to trees randomly, and those are to deal with the Gypsy Moths. At any rate, I’ve started to notice some large-scale infestations, and I’m wondering if this is a local thing or is happening nationwide.
Gypsy Moths
by John Cole| 40 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
jharp
I remember about 1990ish driving through the Cuyahoga Valley south of Cleveland and seeing entire stands of oaks completely defoliated by the gypsy moths. Not a leaf left.
And the next year the trees were fine.
jharp
Oh, and here in central Indiana we do not have a gypsy moth problem.
Omnes Omnibus
Well, with the plague of frogs mentioned in the last thread, I am becoming concerned.
maye
Not where I live. But a few weeks ago, I noticed a dead rattlesnake in the parking lot of the local pizzeria.
demo woman
This is my third summer in the house and the first year of the killer tadpoles The heat does have something to do with the prolific frogs though. I’m glad that someone is enjoying my back yard.
beltane
The gypsy moths come and go. What I am seeing around me are purple traps hanging in the trees every mile or so along all the roads. Someone told me the state is looking for signs of the Asian Longhorn beetle, which kills sugar maples, and which was recently spotted as close as Springfield, MA. If we were to suffer an infestation of this beetle, it would do serious damage to Vermont’s economy.
Chris O.
Here in Minnesota we just had our first ever confirmed gypsy moth caterpillar. It may be a sign of things to come but the Department of Agriculture seems to be as on top of the problem as they can be.
AhabTRuler
Um, welcome to the 1980’s. Oh, and Japanese beetles, too.
JackieBinAZ
Gypsy moths hatch in spring and early summer, as do tent caterpillars. If what you’re seeing is just showing up now, they’re probably fall webworms. This site tells you how to identify them.
demo woman
@beltane: Now I have to add maple syrup to my store list along with dry pasta and flour. I haven’t lived in MA in decades and I still miss driving to Vermont when they were tapping the trees.
AhabTRuler
@demo woman:
Gee, in the south they mostly stick to sheep (to say nothing of Scotland).
arguingwithsignposts
@AhabTRuler:
win.
scav
yes, but are these legal immigrant moths or are these little brown invaders taking away legitimate destructive jobs from hard-wrking patriotic ‘mercan moths?!
BethanyAnne
Gypsy moths? Roma? Romama. Gaga oh la la….
Omnes Omnibus
@scav: That’s what the boxes on trees are for, to check their papers.
demo woman
@arguingwithsignposts: Yup.. That will probably show up on the annual top ten list but the guys in the south aren’t that discriminating..
Omnes Omnibus
@BethanyAnne: Ack!
beltane
@demo woman: Even if the killer beetles do not materialize, global warming will cut into syrup production. 2010 was a good year, but the sap run has been pretty sketchy lately. Sugaring is another fine old tradition that is not long for this world.
apikoros
As for range,
The boxes you see are not directly controlling the moths, but rather are counting stations. In the east, gypsy moths are endemic, and expected at low levels. If they swarm, tho, they need control. The boxes are checked on a regular basis and if a large number are found, control begins.
LT
sory, don’t know a thing about gypsy moths, but you reminded me about something I read some months ago about the problems with bats being wiped out in caves in West Virginia and the area. These bats are so sensitive that one visit by a human to a cave can make the entire colony leave. Made wildlife officials close all access to many caves, which was a controversy, of course. Do you know anything about this?
Davis X. Machina
Gypsy moths are cyclical. They were so numerous in the ’80s when I was working in the Blue Hills south of Boston that you could hear their droppings hitting the detritus on the forest floor when it was quiet. And then they went away for years and years. Most times a forest will recover from a single-year, or two-year population explosion, but the third year, there’s a significant die-off of hardwoods.
We used to put a band of duct tape smeared with vaseline or used crankcase oil around the trunk. For years after you could see the band, or just where the band had been, on trees all over the state.
beltane
@LT: White-nose syndrome in bats has decimated bat colonies throughout the east. The pathogen that causes it survives in the caves long after the bats are gone, infecting any new colonies of bats that enter.
burnspbesq
The level of gypsy moth infestation seems to be cyclical. I can remember sitting on my parents’ porch one night in a spring in the early 1980s when they were particularly bad in Jersey. The sound of caterpillar-shit landing on leaves and on the ground was like a light, steady rain. Ick.
apikoros
@scav: Well, they arrived in 1869, so they beat my ancestors, don’t know about yours :-)
BobS
It’s been a few years since they’ve been a problem in my part of northern Michigan. As far as I know, the state discontinued it’s suppression program 3 or 4 years ago (a harbinger of the budget cutting that threatens to make this formerly progressive state into the Mississippi of the north), but spraying is done ‘as needed’ (with BT) based on a census as noted above. In fact, our township just voted to continue a millage for the spraying program.
The latest invasive forest pest in Michigan (as well as other parts of North America) is the Emerald Ash Borer, somewhat controllable (in individual trees) with heavy-duty pesticides. The primary method of control right now are prohibitions on the movement of firewood from southern to northern Michigan.
Corner Stone
Are you getting your hair done up all pretty for an upcoming trip to California?
LiberalTarian
Yeah, I’m really worried about the bats.
U.S. Bats Flying Toward Extinction
ellaesther
@burnspbesq: Oooh. That was a memory I didn’t need revived.
bemused
@Chris O.:
Oh great. They make a huge mess when there is a big infestation. I remember a year when there were so many, the lawn looked like it was moving. I’d come home from work and have to sweep my way into the house. They pile up on the south side of buildings and you better get rid of them pronto because they are soft and squishy and reek the most putrid smell as they decompose. I haven’t heard of bears or any other critters wanting to eat them not even the lake fish except possibly guinea hens.
I remember a guy from the Duluth area found a use for them…he made army worm wine. He even had a website although he could only sell t-shirts, not the wine. There was even a blind wine tasting with several Duluth wine store owners participating. The army worm wine got some good reviews but it must have been quite a surprise to find out what they had been tasting.
2th&nayle
@demo woman: Not sure which part of the country you hail from, but the one thing I know from personal experience is that where you have a prodigious population of frogs, you will also have a corresponding population of snakes. I’m no snake hater and frown on the indiscriminate killing of even the venomous types, but you should refrain from traipsing around your back yard barefooted, especially after dark. At least until the frog plague subsides.
Origuy
An infestation of the Oriental Fruit Fly was found around here, in Milpitas, CA. They keep a watch for fruit flies because they affect so many different kinds of fruits and vegetables that are grown around here. Two flies were enough to start an eradication program, but right now it’s limited to 11 square miles.
I was here for the Mediterranean Fruit Fly infestation in the 80s. Then they had helicopters spraying all over the area, along with massive releases of sterile male flies.
Teejay
As I recall they were last here in CT in the early 1980’s. Ugly little green caterpillars that metamorphosize into moths. They devour oak leaves 24-7. Their chewing is so loud at night that it’ll keep you awake. It’s been more than twenty years since they’ve been here and I don’t miss the little bastards a bit.
henqiguai
@beltane (#6):
Sorry darlin’, but you mean Shrewsbury. And I seem to vaguely recall ‘GBH mentioning the Arnold Arboretum area. I’m north of Shrewsbury and surrounded by Maples; I’m always lookin’ closely at strange speckled bugs when I see them.
scav
@apikoros:
As always, it’s that dreaded decision: which half of me do I deport and is it a latitudinal or longitudinal partition.
Bill Arnold
When I was growing up in the Northeast (late 60s, 70s), the Gypsy Moth populations were unregulated rough boom/crash cycles, and during the peaks one could see a lot of defoliation (and caterpillar droppings on everything under affected trees). Tulip poplars and conifers were not affected IIRC.
I knew a scientist (plant pathologist?) in the late 70s who was studying these cycles; I recall him saying that the populations were being controlled largely by generalist predators of many species, and that these predators didn’t do a great job of tracking the gypsy moth populations.
Around 1990 (maybe 1989) there was a crash caused by a fungus (E. maimaiga). It was aided by a wet spring, and wiped out the gypsy moth population. Since then, the populations have never gotten to forest-defoliation levels, at least not in the southern New York/Connecticut area. I presume that E. maimaiga is now keeping the populations under control. E. maimaiga was supposedly introduced in 1910 but there is conjecture that it may have been reintroduced in 1989/1990.
Zach
All over the place in the greater Baltimore area, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry.
hamletta
Gypsy Moths were a big deal in my hometown in mid-MoCo MD in the late ’80s-early ’90s. Since they’re sitting on hundreds of acres of virgin forest in the midst of DC suburban sprawl, the critters were viewed as a major threat.
So much so that my mom and her contingent of crazy old broads dressed up as the “Gypsy Mothers” for the Fourth of July parade, in camo and bug net-equipped hats.
Haven’t heard about them in at least a decade, though.
hamletta
@bemused: Oy. We had a convergence of 13-year and 17-year cicadas here in Nashvegas back in 1985.
It was like a Hitchcock movie, or maybe a DeMille biblical epic. Great clouds of insects blotted out the sun. Not many people had air-conditioning in their cars, so they’d have the windows open, and these big, dopey bugs would fly into people’s cars and they’d freak out and get into wrecks.
Their crunchy little carcasses were everywhere.
Byfuglien (pronounced Bufflin)
We found a bunch of gypsy moth caterpillars on trees in south central Wisconsin.
Eric
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