Little guys don't often triumph over giants, but I am pleased to report on one such success story. The giant in this case was a massive infestation of the two nasty cousins, diffuse and spotted knapweed, throughout the valleys of the Southern Interior. And the triumphant Davids are a series of tiny weevils and flies, which go by cumbersome names like Larinus minutus and Urophora quadrifasciata. To give you an idea of their size, the Urophora fly is considerably smaller than the "U" its name starts with, yet this group of introduced biological control insects is on the verge of decimating the core of British Columbia's knapweed population, which spans the province from Fernie to Falkland to Fort St. John.
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