How I Took Down Sharpshooters in the Pacific

摘要

Mark Hoddle knows how to fight biology with biology. As director of the Center for Invasive Species Research at the University of California, Riverside, he has overseen some of the most effective methods ever documented for suppressing invasive pests with their natural enemies. Scientists and government officials sought his help in French Polynesia, where islands were overrur with the glassy-winged sharpshooter, or Homalodisca vitripennis. First detected in Tahiti, the half-inch-long, mottled brown leafhopper carries a plant disease-causing bacterium, and the insect had spread to other islands in French Polynesia. It was wreaking havoc on native crops and vegetation in addition to swarming people, encrusting streetlights and invading buildings by the hundreds. Because the sharpshooters extract a water-conducting plant tissue called xylem and excrete it at 100 times their body weight, "sharpshooter pee" was raining down from trees, earning the pest the name of "the pissing fly."