Asian long-horned beetle

Asian long-horned beetle ( Anoplophora glabripennis )

The Asian long-horned beetle ( Anoplophora glabripennis, sometimes abbreviated ALB ) is a native to East Asia Bockkäferart, but is now established as neozoon in the U.S. and in Central Europe and is feared as a timber pest.

Features

The Imago is black with some twenty distributed over the body bright spots. The body ( without probe) is 2.5 to 4 cm in length, wherein the females are somewhat longer. The on blue background black and white ringed elfsegmentigen sensor in the male are about 2.5 times, the female about 1.3 times longer than the body. The larvae are dirty white, have a light brown face plate and show a hint of battlements chest drawing. Due to lack of granularity of the prothorax can be distinguished from other larvae easily. They are up to five inches long and thick up to a centimeter.

Development

A female lays about 30 eggs. For each individual it drills a crack in a tree, usually at weak points such as in branch forks. In the actual distribution area this happens especially on willows and poplars. Especially in countries where the species has immigrated, other deciduous trees such as maples and fruit trees are infested. These cracks cause sap flow, which attracts wasps and especially hornets. After two weeks the larvae hatch, which then develop into eleven stages and five inches long and an inch thick. In the larval stage, they eat one to three centimeters thick transitions into the wood. After the pupal stage, the one-to two -year-old animals come as adults according to the Puppenwiege, followed by a phase of maturation of self-indulgence. An infested tree dies, in most cases.

The Asian long-horned beetle as neozoon

Was Introduced the Asian long-horned beetle with building and packaging timber and through the bonsai trade. In contrast to its native range, the animal is not specialized as neozoon to certain host species, but affects all deciduous trees and so many farmed stocks such as fruit trees. Because of this non-specific self-indulgence is the beetle in the newly populated areas become a problem for the ecosystem, it is counted in the Global Invasive Species Database harmful invasive alien species to the hundred world.

Situation in North America

Due to the infestation with these beetles have been since 1996, the year of their first discovery in the United States, New Jersey, New York and Illinois, thousands of trees like the damage is about 150 million U.S. dollars. According to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is a danger that the beetles spread over the entire United States, causing damage in the timber industry, tourism and agriculture of more than 650 billion U.S. dollars could. Currently, the beetle threatens 30-35 % of all trees in the urban regions of the eastern United States. Control measures currently exist, inter alia, to provide infested areas under quarantine to prevent the infestation of other trees, and to make or burn infested trees.

Situation in Europe

The beetle and its larvae are regularly introduced in packaging or with living plants to Europe. Meanwhile, there are populations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France (Alsace, Cote d'Or, Loire- Atlantique, Loiret ), Italy and the Netherlands.

Evidence of an infestation are finding living beetle from May to October, round holes with a diameter of more than one centimeter in stem wood or stronger branches of trees as well as smaller, oval-shaped holes in the range of forked branches, and coarse debris below the holes. For the detection and sniffer dogs are used.

In 2001, the species was found in Braunau am Inn in Austria. In a packaging timber control new infestations were discovered by the Asian long-horned beetle in July 2012 in St. Georgen / Austria (near Geinberg ). In a zone of 500m around the place where any potentially endangered tree was cut and checked by sniffer dogs of the Federal Office for Forest on the beetles.

Since 2005, a population of Bornheim spreads in NRW starting in the nearby Bonn.

In Switzerland, the species was first detected in the canton of Fribourg and the canton of Thurgau in 2011. In July 2012, it was discovered another population in Winterthur and combated by cases of 60 young trees. In August 2012, a first beetle was discovered in central Switzerland.

The District Office of the district of Lörrach issued in early August 2012, a general order to combat the dangerous wood pest within the Port of Weil am Rhein in the triangle Basel- Mulhouse - Lörrach.

In the Official Journal of the district Ebersberg near Munich, Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture ( LFL ) on November 20, 2012 issued a general order to combat an occurrence of dangerous timber pest in Feldkirchen near Munich after October 8, 2012 in a maple tree and in 500 m distance in other trees an infestation was found. A copse between the municipalities hair and Feldkirchen (600 trees ) has been completely cleared in February 2013.