Lab Updates

2009 Rearing Season:

Production: Obtained a new clean colony of St beetles from Clemson. Was able to release 67,248 (65,497 adults, 1631 eggs, 120 larvae) in 25 HCA’s. We were hoping to double the production from last year with a goal around 100,000. However, with the creation of a new rearing room and trying to straighten out the kinks that came along with that we fell short of our goal.

Also released more larvae that was found in cages during breakdown. Those were scooped up with the debris and packaged in release containers. The debris and larvae were then placed at the base of a release tree or in filter paper baskets on the trees. Those numbers weren’t included in the total count. 10 small buckets were dispersed.

Held back about 4400 to use as our starter colony for the next rearing season and plan to make arrangements for a microsporidia check.

Recovery: Four release sites were sampled in March before any releases were made this year. St beetles were found at two of those sites. At Slaughter Creek 156 beetles were reared out from branch clippings. This site received 2,747 adults and 1,911 eggs during the 2008 releases. This area also had releases from UGA and Clemson. The second site was Dick’s Creek. 3 adults beetles were also reared out of collected branches. 3,211 adults were released at this site in 2008.

Recovery efforts will continue in October with beat sheets. In March 2010 we plan to work with the other labs to collect branch samples from each HCA that received beetles and rear them out in the labs.

We were given permission from the forest service to extend HCA#115 (Yahoola Creek) in order to designate an area for egg/larvae releases of St beetles in 2010. Since we were able to recover a high number of beetles from an area that received almost 2,000 eggs I would like to see if the life stage of the beetle at release had anything to do with it.

Lab Update: The beetle lab is in the process of moving down the street to another yellow house in order to make room for campus growth. Hopefully all the kinks will be straightened out for the 2010 rearing season as we still hope to reach 100,000.

We’ve had a tremendous amount of help from Jim Sullivan who was able to collect hemlock branches for us. Especially as quality food is getting farther away.

Environmental Leadership Center

Predator Beetle Lab