Request for Volunteers!
I am looking for volunteers to help me with our 2012 United States Department of Agriculture smoky-winged beetle bandit biosurveillance survey! The USDA and Rhode Island DEM have been cooperating on this survey for three years. This insect is NOT harmful to Humans!!! It DOES NOT STING HUMANS!!!
What it DOES DO is find Buprestidae beetles from the tree canopy of the surrounding forest, stun them, carry them back to their nests and bury them as food for their young. We find this to be helpful because it is very DIFFICULT for US to find Buprestidae beetles!!! Therefore, we use the smoky-winged beetle bandit to get to the Buprestidae beetles from the treetops.
What I need from volunteers:
People who are willing to visit baseball fields multiple times in July to collect Buprestidae beetles from the smoky-winged beetle bandit. Collection is either by finding Buprestidae beetles that were discarded by the nests or by netting the Smoky Winged beetle bandit and taking the Buprestidae beetles from her… and then releasing her to go catch more! The smoky winged beetle bandit is NOT HARMED in this process!!! We try to collect 50 beetles at each site if possible! I will have a training day in June for anybody who is willing to participate in this survey.
The beetles collected from this survey typically are wood-boring insects. Therefore, the species collected give us an idea of what trees might be under attack in the area or if any invasive beetles are present such as Emerald Ash Borer, the oak splendor beetle, or the goldspotted oak borer. (none of these are known to be in Rhode Island currently!!)
We have multiple locations in Rhode Island with known colonies and many locations that have never been visited due to lack of people-power! If you know people who might be interested in this interesting scientific survey.... please let me know!
The only Safety concern regarding this survey is that these beetles are most active on hot/sunny days. Volunteers must be able to be outside in these conditions. (Water, sunscreen and hats are essential to complete this survey!)
For more info about this project please visit
http://www.cerceris.info/pdf/esc_bulletin_%20careless&marshall.pdf
Or
www.cerceris.info
We've created this email address [email protected] in order to facilitate volunteers for this survey. Feel free to forward it to others. If this is something you could add to your website or put into an email to your tree stewards, that would be great!
--
USDA/APHIS/PPQ
Smoky-Winged Beetle Bandit Survey
Laura Hartmann
[email protected]
508-525-5723
Comments