A species of wasp¹ that is a natural enemy of a wood-boring beetle² that kills black locust³ trees has been rediscovered, more than 100 years after the last wasp of this species was found. The discovery is significant because the wood-boring beetle, known as the locust borer, is considered a serious pest that has discouraged planting of black locusts⁴, which played an important role in American history. The trees, whose wood is strong, hard and extremely durable⁵, helped build the Jamestown settlement and were featured prominently at George Washington's Mount Vernon.

 

The only previous known specimens⁶ of the wasp (Oobius depressus) date back to 1914 and were found in Morristown, Illinois. The problem with those specimens is that they were missing their heads and antennae⁷, making them difficult to identify even by specialists of that wasp family, Encyrtidae.

 

That led Serguei V. Triapitsyn, director of the UC Riverside Entomology Research Museum, and Toby R. Petrice, an entolomogist with the U.S.D.A. Forest Service Northern Research Station in Lansing, Mich., to search for new specimens.

 

This was not an easy task because eggs of locust borer, particularly ones parasitized by this wasp, are extremely difficult to find. Adults of the locust borer itself, on the other hand, are common in the Midwest in early fall because they feed on the pollen⁸ of goldenrod.

 

Because females visit black locust trees to lay eggs, the scientists placed an insect trap designed to collect beetles⁹ and other arboreal¹⁰ insects in the canopy¹¹ of a black locust tree at Rose Lake State Wildlife Area in Bath Charter Township, Mich., from August to October 2015.

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