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
00:39these galleries. Well their larvae create them and we're out looking for the adults.
00:45The adults should be coming out around about now it's starting to get dark and the temperature
00:51is still reasonably warm. So these markings here they've been left by the beetles? They've been
00:57left by the beetles when they were little larvae. The eggs are laid onto the stem, they burrow
01:03in through the bark and then they feed creating these galleries around the stem ring barking
01:09the tree and as you can see on this tree there are galleries all the way down. So a little
01:16community
01:17of larvae have ring barked this tree all the way down and it's died as a consequence. We're looking for
01:25phoricantha master's eye. Is that got a common name? Yeah it's called the ring barker borer and
01:31and it's a pretty good name because we've already seen the damage they create and that's what they do
01:36they ring bark. So 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? Yeah and she
01:55looks like she's in a state ready to eye deposit. I mean you have a look at her and a
02:02good indication
02:02that she's she's carrying eggs you can see see the length of her elytra there so those hard coverings
02:10over her abdomen so they're covering the wings you can see her abdomen is sticking out further than
02:16her elytra so her abdomen now she's already mated and her abdomen now is really quite bloated and she's
02:24full of eggs. And why do you want to collect the eggs? Well those eggs are part of what we're
02:30trying
02:30to have females well we want them to deposit their eggs so that we can bring their eggs back out
02:37to
02:38to affected stands and unaffected places to see if we can pick up the wasps that parasitize their eggs
02:47if they exist. How many eggs do you reckon she's got in there? Oh well she could have anything up
02:54to 80
02:54eggs in there. 80? If you come around on this side you can see she is she is she has
03:01a very full belly.
03:03No one's seen one of these bugs lay their eggs in the wild since 1909 is that right? They are
03:10believed
03:10to lay their eggs singly and that is from a 1909 publication. So could she lay her eggs now? Oh
03:18god
03:19wouldn't that be great. Oh look at her she is something.
03:35After a couple more hours searching in vain and with a thick mist beginning to blow in suddenly
03:42I hear a yelp of joy in the distance. You're just getting really excited of air again. Can you just
03:49explain explain why you're so excited? It's hard to you know make it clear just how exciting this is.
03:56Why is this so exciting? We have we have never seen this before and the only description of this
04:02anywhere is that Boracanthamaster's eye lays its eggs singly just as it as it goes along the bark and
04:11we have right now multiple eggs at least 13 in one position. That's just so good. We could go to
04:22any
04:22number of trees here and you will see where it is as though one egg one egg one egg one
04:27egg and one larva
04:28has gone in. But I mean the thing is that Jesse and I have been talking about how the setup
04:36we have in
04:37lab is not suitable and the low chance of getting many eggs because we're counting on them laying
04:42multiple eggs all at once and and the the the evidence in the in the peer-reviewed literature
04:49is that that's not the case. That's not what they do. They do it. It's pretty cool. 13 eggs. At
04:56least 14.
04:57You're fist pumping. Don't you 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...
05:10What's the maximum amount that she could lay? Is it 80 odd? Uh it could she could have up to
05:1580 and we
05:16did we did watch her move further up and looked like she'd stopped at a couple of other places. So
05:21she may she may have deposited more further up uh but gee 40 40 out of one position is 39
05:33more than they apparently put down in one spot um according to past research. Oh gosh fantastic. So these
05:42are the eggs not 13 but up to 40? Yeah. More than one man.
05:56Yeah 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 Foracampus.
Comments