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Wanted: Biosurveillance volunteers to Monitor Ground Wasps for Bad Beetles

July 25, 2011 - Augusta - No, this isn't an "X-Files" episode featuring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson digging up Maine baseball diamonds for native wasps.

Instead, Project Canopy and the Maine Forest Service are trying to establish a network of bug hunters across the state to learn when the insidious emerald green ash borers arrive from upstate New York.

Bug networkers do this by finding colonies of Cerceris fumipennis, a solitary, non-stinging, ground-nesting wasp.

Its favorite habitat is the fine sand used in baseball diamonds, in which it creates substantial underground nesting tunnels, Kimberly Ballard of Project Canopy said Wednesday in Portland.

Because the wasps line their nests with wood-boring beetles, the hope is that when they leave their nests between noon and 2 p.m. daily during July and August to forage for beetles, they'll return with metallic-green ash borers.

"The emerald ash borer has been found in upstate New York right on the Massachusetts border, so it's literally a day away," Ballard said.

"They often will travel in firewood, so folks coming up to Maine for the weekend for camping and they haven't heard about our firewood ban, they could accidentally bring this insect across the border and into our forests."

Currently, there are no known infestations of the ash borers in Maine, but if there were, every ash species in the state would be in jeopardy, Ballard said.

Hence the proactive work to find volunteers via an outing to an active wasp colony at 1 p.m. Wednesday, July 27, at the baseball diamonds behind Freeport Middle School at 19 Kendall Lane in Freeport.

Rain date is 1 p.m. Friday, July 29.

For more information, call Ballard at 669-4330 ext. 3 or visit http://www.maine.gov/doc/mfs/fhm/pages/CercerisVolunteers.htm and http://www.maine.gov/doc/mfs/EAB_ID.htm.

Terry Karkos, Sun Journal, July 2011


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