Wild Fact #501 – How Do You Like Them Apples? – Light Brown Apple Moth
Photo by Donald Hobern (Wikimedia)
Before getting into today’s Wild Fact, I would like to take a quick moment to say Happy Birthday to my Dad! I hope you are enjoying your day. It almost seems fitting to be talking about the Light Brown Apple Moth today, since my dad has a couple of apple trees growing around the house. This is an impressive feat for someone living in Northern Ontario. This particular pest is native to Australia but has also been introduced to other areas such as New Zealand, Hawaii, and a few years ago this moth was identified in California, so they appear to be making their way around the world.
The Light Brown Apple Moth is a major agricultural pest due to their diverse eating habits. This particular moth is not picky and is considered to be a herbivore generalist, which means they will eat pretty much any type of vegetation. In Australia alone, they have been known to feed on about 123 different plant species. This includes everything from fruit crops, vegetable and ornamental plants to greenhouse crops and even young pine trees. It seems the Light Brown Apple Moth could also be called “Little Mikey”. Anyone who understands this comparison gets a nice, shiny sticker.
Photo by Ken Walker (Wikimedia)
Figuring out how to control this obnoxious pest has also been an issue. Typically an Integrated Pest Management plan is put into place which includes insecticides, oiling the plants, biological controls and even releasing a synthetic pheromone which confuses the female and interrupts their mating pattern. I think this last option is pretty clever but I am not sure how effective it is. The control of this pest managed to cause quite an up roar in Australia when people were using untested insecticides, which were not approved, in an attempt to save their crops. As you might expect, a large population of people came out to protest this decision. So not only does the Light Brown Apple Moth destroy crops, they can also cause friction between humans. Now that is a pest!
Light Brown Apple Moth Fast Fact – This particular insect is considered to be a noxious insect in North America and as such Canada and the USA have put restrictions on importing goods from countries with a high population of the Light Brown Apple Moth.
I guess that is the end of our special Garden Pest Theme of Wild Facts. I hope you enjoyed learning about a few animals that are destroying our crops around the world. Enjoy your weekend, everyone!
