00:00The sun's just setting behind me here up in the Brindabellas on the top of Mount Giannini
00:06and tonight I'm on a midnight mission to try and find a bug that is killing and decimating many of
00:14the snow gums not only up here but right along the spine of the New South Wales and Victorian
00:21snowy mountains. I've tagged along with Dr Matthew Brookhouse from the Fenner School for Environment
00:27and Society at the ANU, undergraduate student Jesse Hill and volunteers Liam Midsen and Sienna Haig.
00:35So tonight Matt what are we looking for? So we're looking for the beetles that create these galleries
00:41well their larvae create them and we're out looking for the adults. The adults should be coming out
00:46around about now it's starting to get dark and the temperature is still reasonably warm. So these
00:53markings here they've been left by the beetles? They've been left by the beetles when they were
00:59little larvae. The eggs are laid onto the stem, they burrow in through the bark and then they feed
01:05creating these galleries around the stem ring barking the tree and as you can see on this tree
01:12there are galleries all the way down. So a little community of larvae have ring barked this tree
01:21all the way down and it's died as a consequence. We're looking for phoricantha master's eye.
01:27Is that got a common name? Yeah it's called the ring barker borer and and it's a pretty good name
01:32because we've already seen the damage they create and and that's that's what they do they ring bark.
01:38So what's going on here Matt? That is a female phoricantha master's eye and she looks
01:47full of eggs. So she's one of the beetles responsible for decimating the snow gums up here.
01:54Yeah and she looks like she's in a state ready to eye deposit. I mean you have a look at
02:00her
02:01and a good indication that she's she's carrying eggs. You can see see the length of her elytra there
02:08so those hard coverings over her abdomen so they're covering the wings. You can see her abdomen is
02:15sticking out further than her elytra. So her abdomen now she's already mated and her abdomen
02:22now is really quite bloated and she's full of eggs. And why do you want to collect the eggs?
02:27Well those eggs are part of what we're trying to have females well we want them to deposit their eggs
02:34so that we can bring their eggs back out to uh to affected stands and unaffected places
02:41to see if we can pick up the wasps that parasitize their eggs if they exist.
02:49How many eggs do you reckon she's got in there? Oh well she could have anything up to 80 eggs
02:55in there.
02:5580? If you come around on this side you can see she is she is she has a very full
03:02belly.
03:03No one's seen one of these bugs lay their eggs in the wild since 1909 is that right?
03:10They are believed to lay their eggs singly and that is from a 1909 publication.
03:16So could she lay her eggs now? Oh god wouldn't that be great.
03:23Oh look at her she is something.
03:35After a couple more hours searching in vain and with a thick mist beginning to blow in,
03:41suddenly I hear a yelp of joy in the distance.
03:45You're just getting really excited of air again. Can you just explain why you're so excited?
03:51It's hard to you know make it clear just how exciting this is.
03:56Why is this so exciting?
03:57We have we have never seen this before and the only description of this anywhere is that
04:05Boracanthamaster's eye lays its eggs singly just as it as it goes along the bark and we have right now
04:13multiple eggs at least 13 in one position. That's just so good.
04:21We could go to any number of trees here and you will see where it is as though one egg,
04:26one egg, one egg, one egg and one larva has gone in.
04:30But I mean the thing is that Jesse and I have been talking about how the setup we have in
04:37the lab is
04:37not suitable and the low chance of getting many eggs because we're counting on them laying multiple eggs all at
04:44once.
04:45And and the the the evidence in the in the peer-reviewed literature is that that's not the case,
04:50that's not what they do.
04:53They do it.
04:5513 eggs?
04:56At least 14.
04:57Your fist pumping, go your fist pump again, what's your word?
05:01So there's not 13 eggs, it looks like we've got about 40 out of there, is that is that um...
05:05No, that's that just...
05:10What's the maximum amount that she could lay, is it 80 odd?
05:13Uh it could she could have up to 80 and we did we did watch her move further up and
05:19looked like she'd
05:20stopped at a couple of other places so she may she may have deposited more further up uh but gee
05:2740 40 out of one
05:29position is 39 more than they apparently put down in one spot um according to past research oh god it's
05:40fantastic so these are the eggs
05:44not 13 but up to 40 yeah more than one man
05:55yeah yeah there sure are
06:00those eggs are going out into an egg envelope tomorrow to try to pick up wasps yeah and it's
06:05the wasp you're trying to pick up yeah and the reason you're trying to pick up the wasps is is
06:09that
06:10that is at the moment so far as we can tell our best chance of biological control because the wasp
06:16will lay its eggs inside inside the eggs of poricamp
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