VA Tech Experiment: Polar Vortex May Decimate D.C. Stinkbugs In 2014

barlevg writes "Each fall, a team led by Virginia Tech Professor of Entomology Thomas Kuhar gathers brown marmorated stink bugs from around campus and plops them into ventilated and insulated five-gallon buckets designed to simulate the habitats in which the bugs naturally wait out the winter. While previous lab tests have shown the insects capable of surviving chills of -20 C, last month's polar vortex proved too much for the little guys, with only 5% surviving the sustained cold conditions. This suggests that the DC area's population of stink bugs and other overwintering insects should be much lower come spring than in previous years."

Comments

Hurray?

[kylemonger]

Who's in favor of more stinkbugs in the spring?

Re:Hurray?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are an invasive species that was accidentally introduced in 1998.

But I don't know enough about them to say that they haven't filled some gap left by the disappearance of another species, heavily predated another species, or drawn more birds/whatever to the area than will be able to be supported by the environment without stinkbugs.

This is "good" news due to the whole invasive species thing, though, we'll just have to see if it has any other effects. Though, as an invasive species. I'm not sure that they've been reduced to a low enough level to actually be wiped out; if they're still lacking successful competition, as you would expect since it's been less than 20 years, they will probably bounce right back. (barring further strange weather that eliminates them more completely)

Re:Hurray?

[houstonbofh]

It Houston, we love the years when we have at least two hard freezes separated by at least a week. It drastically cuts down on the mosquitoes the next summer. This year we had three good ones so summer should be much more pleasant at night.

Re:Hurray?

[The Grim Reefer]

They destroy fruit crops and try to survive through the winter by invading houses. I think I've found one flying around my house just about every week this winter. I read about a house around here that they estimated had 25, 000 of them in it.

They have no natural predators in the US. The only thing I've seen eat them is my dog. Which would be funny, except he's a 95 pound Doberman and scratches the hell out of my hardwood floors jumping and chasing after them.

Re: Hurray?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mosquitoes survive winters well. What they don't survive well is cold snaps once they've come out thinking spring has come. We had one here in Sweden a few years ago, and the following summer was pleasantly low in mosquitoes. In comparison, last winter was very cold (-30ÂC for many days), but spring came without a hitch and we were inundated with mosquitoes. The large amount of snow melting helped getting conditions nice and swampy for the little bastards.

Re:Hurray?

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians eat stinkbugs

I KNEW they were cannibals!

Re:Hurray?

[Rob Simpson]

Great, so all we have to do is release wave after wave of Dobermans...

Re:Hurray?

[dreamchaser]

Woodpeckers don't eat them. Nothing does in North America. The species in question is an invasive species from Asia with no natural predators here. They are also highly destructive to fruit crops.

Oh great!

[Dorianny]

Oh great now there will be nothing to cover the stench of the politicians in congress.

What about the other vermin in DC?

[fsagx]

All the breathless Polar Vortex talk reminds me of yesteryear when the local TV weather people discovered the big, bad "El Nino."

Re:What about the other vermin in DC?

[hey!]

You make it sound like introducing new ideas to the public is somehow morally dubious.

The El Niño/Southern Oscillation was described some eighty years ago, but it was relatively obscure stuff until there was a big uptick in scientific interest in the mid-80s. Researchers began to realize that this phenomenon had huge, predictable consequences on weather across the globe. I remember because my wife was a grad student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution at the time. It's not surprising that it takes twenty years or so for an idea that's caught on in the scientific community to enter the public consciousness. Not as many people subscribe to Science News as should.

The benefits of good cold winters

[StefanJ]

I sometimes hear the effects of climate change blown off with glib remarks about longer growing seasons.

The truth is, good hard winters are good for certain types of agriculture. Freezing and thawing churns up the soil. Hard frosts kill off weeds and pests.

Now we have another data point.

Re:The benefits of good cold winters

[hey!]

True, but global warming doesn't mean we won't have good, hard winters. Sometimes we'll have them in places where such winters were seldom seen previously.

The reason that "climate change" is a better term than "global warming" is that "global warming" seems to conjure up a spurious picture where everywhere on the Earth is going to get noticeably hotter. In reality we're talking about *global averages* going up a degree or two at most over the next couple of decades. That's not much temperature-wise. A one degree change uniformly applied across the globe wouldn't close many ski resorts, for example, or make it nice to swim in the Gulf of Maine.

The real issue is that degree of average temperature increase across the globe represents a huge total addition of energy to the atmosphere. That in turn means that what previously would have been anomalous weather will become more common: hotter OR colder than normal; wetter or drier; longer or shorter seasons than previously experienced. These changes will put stress on plants, animals and human communities to adapt. A February cold snap might be a good thing for a New England apple orchard, but it's lousy for a Florida orange grove.

Finally

[oldhack]

Don't decimate. Annihilate the bums in Washington.

Whereas a few thousand miles away...

[Retron]

And on the other side of the Atlantic, the strong jetstream (caused by the abnormal cold in the eastern States) has led to one of the mildest and wettest winters on record in England. I was surprised when last weekend I saw swarms of newly-hatched flies buzzing around the fields of Berkshire; you don't normally see those until late March or early April. To see them in mid-February is quite remarkable. We'll be in a for a miserable spring and summer over here as there will be far more insects buzzing around than normal due to the almost complete lack of frost this "winter" (and I use the term loosely, as for millions of us in the south of the UK it's just been an extended autumn this year!)

Re:Whereas a few thousand miles away...

[TapeCutter]

Last week in Melbourne we had out of control bushfires and heatwaves, last night I put the heater on for a couple of hours to ward off a blast of cold Antarctic air. The west of the continent also received one of it's rare desert downpours last week, about 2-4 weeks from now there will be an opportunity to see the west in full bloom, the eggs of fish, amphibians, insects, and crustaceans that have lay dormant in the parched earth for years will explode into life and everything will be carpeted with wildflowers. Migratory birds have already abandoned the coastal wetlands around Perth and are swarming to the temporary inland lakes in their millions. How the birds know this natural feast is about to occur is still a mystery. It's an irregular natural spectacle, and in a couple of months it will all be gone.

Seems to be the same rule for diseases too

[GodfatherofSoul]

The rule has always been a good, hard winter means less sickness the next year. I don't know if that means less animals or insects transporting agents of disease or what.

Re:Seems to be the same rule for diseases too

[TapeCutter]

Could be because a hard winter also kills off vulnerable humans.

I'm callin' BS...

[voodoo cheesecake]

They won't be decimated, they survive here in Alaska. Not sure if it's an adaptation but they make it through 8 months of snow and ice just fine.

Re:decimate means to reduce by 1/10

[NoKaOi]

Nope. One in ten in the Roman army were killed. That's decimation. People misuse it all the time.

No. It is you who are clinging to a deprecated definition. Language evolves over time, and the etymology of a word may be such that the definition of a word is based on a historical definition but no longer means the exact same thing.

In the Oxford English dictionary, the 1st definition is "1. kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of," while the 2nd definition notes that it is historical, "2. historical kill one in every ten of (a group of people, originally a mutinous Roman legion) as a punishment for the whole group."

In Roman times, "addicts" were broke people given as slaved to the people they owed money too. "Nervous" meant a person who was sinewy and vigorous. "Nice" meant ignorant. So you see, just because a word is based on a word that meant something thousands of years ago it doesn't mean it means the same thing today.

Also, when a word has multiple definitions, we have this thing most of us learned about in elementary school called "context." When you read the headline, did you understand which definition it meant? If for some reason you honestly thought it meant 1 out of 10 stinkbugs died, did you understand it after reading the article? Are you being obstinate or nice?

Re:decimate means to reduce by 1/10

[Anonymous Coward]

[disclaimer: I'm not the OP you responded to.]

While I agree with what you said, I think it's important to note that the guy you responded to might have been advocating the S.I. units of slaughter:

micromate = kill 1/1000000
millimate = kill 1/1000
centimate = kill 1/100
decimate = kill 1/10

dekamate = overkill by 10x
hectomate = overkill by 100x
kilomate = overkill by 1000x
megamate = overkill by 1000000x

oh, and don't forget the binary versions:

kibimate = overkill by 1024x
mebimate = overkill by 1048576x
gibimate = overkill by 1073741824x (aka instagib) :^D

p.s. I hope they at least dekamated those stink fuckers.