what's his name?

Question

how is called that parasite that is killing a huge quantity of pine trees in the west of the country?

c'mon! ...you must know it...

l live in italy and l want to do a research on it

Answer 1

(L)
Pine bark beetles (Ips sp. and Dendroctonus sp.) feed primarily on the inner bark (phloem tissue). This has the same effect as girdling (peeling off the bark) of the tree. Damage caused by their feeding acts as an internal tourniquet cutting off the flow of nutrients from the leaves to the other parts of the tree. As the damage progresses, sugars and other complex compounds cannot be translocated downward from the leaves to non-photosynthetic areas of the tree. The beetle can also introduces a blue stain fungus which grows into the wood (xylem). This fungus prevents water from being transported upward to the leaves. Both of these factors contribute to the decline and death of colonized trees.

Answer 2

If you're talking western US, the pine pitch canker is killing a lot of pines, but they're also drought-stressed and being finished off by bark-beetles. See, for example, the powerpoint at the bottom of the page in the first link.

Answer 3

Lumberjacks in the province are cutting down trees to stay ahead of nematodiasis, dubbed "forest cancer" by some, a disease that has killed more than 10,000 pine trees in the South China Botanical Garden.

According to a provincial forestry official Wednesday, the disease, usually found in northern parts of the country or abroad, poses a severe threat.

"Nematodiasis has been found in many cities in the province," said Lin Duping, director of the Tree Disease Prevention and Control Department under the Guangdong Provincial Forestry Bureau.

"And we actually face many difficulties in eradicating the disease, one of the three major forest diseases in the world," Lin said.

Caused by a contagious parasite carried by beetles common in forest areas, there is no quick and easy cure for the disease.

In addition to widespread disinfections and cutting down dead trees, Lin said his bureau is also planning to ask forestry departments to raise a species of bee that can kill the beetles that host the tiny parasite and curb the spread of the disease.

Lin also called for tighter controls on imported lumber to prevent nematodiasis from further entering the country.

Wang Weiwen, an official from the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Forestry Industry, said many pine trees affected by the scourge in the city have withered. It may have affected more than 86,666 hectares of pine trees or one-third of Guangzhou's total forest area.

A pine tree can die about 40 days after it contracts the disease. According to Wang, all Guangzhou's pine trees will die unless effective measures are taken quickly.

The death of pine trees on this scale could result in serious soil erosion and pollute the upper reaches of the Liuxi River, which winds through one of the major pine forests in Guangzhou and provides drinking water for more than 10 million residents, said Lin Duping.

With a 50 million yuan (US$6 million) of annual economic losses caused by nematodiasis, Guangzhou municipal government has invested more than 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) to fight the disease over the past three years.

Nematodiasis was first found in Guangzhou four years ago. And the disease has spread to cover more than 963 hectares of the city, including Huadu and Panyu districts and the suburb of Conghua, Wang said.

Lin Duping said Guangdong's nematodiasis was first found in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in 1988 and is believed to have come from overseas.

In 1995, nematodiasis spread to the neighboring cities of Huizhou and Dongguan in the eastern part of the prosperous Pearl River Delta region.

By the end of last month, the disease was detected in more than 21,466 hectares of pine forests in the entire province's more than 4.13 million hectares of pine forests.

The province is estimated to be losing between 5 billion yuan (US$600 million) and 10 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) from nematodiasis



another parasite:

Studies of the insect parasites of the Nantucket pine tip moth were conducted on loblolly, Scotch, and Virginia pine in Maryland. Twenty-five species of parasites and associated species were reared from infested stems, 5 of which had not previously been reared from the Nantucket pine tip moth. Total percentages of parasitism was highest for loblolly pine, and lowest in Scotch pine, although the greatest number of parasite species were represented in the Scotch pine material. The parasite species most commonly encountered in the study was Eurytoma pini Bugbee.