SCIENCE

Notebook

Asian Beetle's Impact Unclear

Researchers announced last week that a species of beetle native to East Asia has found its way to a forest in northern Massachusetts.

Entomologists are not certain whether this beetle is likely to harm its new environment, but so far it has shown no signs of ecological threat.

The three-millimeter-long ambrosia beetle, whose Latin name is Xyleborus seriatus , is usually not aggressive and attacks only sick or dead trees, said Robert Rabaglia, an entomologist at the Maryland Department of Agriculture.

What concerns some scientists is the fungus the beetle carries. "These beetles are called ambrosia beetles because they make galleries in dead trees, and they impregnate these galleries with fungus and feed on them; they don't feed on wood," said Richard Hoebeke, assistant curator of the insect collection at Cornell University. Some of the fungi are not pathogenic in their native countries, but they could kill the trees here.

"Most of these beetles come from East Asia, in the solid-wood packing materials" such as boxes, crates or raw cut wood used to stabilize shipments, Rabaglia said.

Rabaglia and Hoebeke discovered the newcomer as part of the federally funded Early Detection and Rapid Response of Invasive Species program. In the program's five years, scientists have found five new species of beetles.

Twenty species of ambrosia beetles have been introduced to the United States in the past 100 years, Rabaglia said, and "the rate of introduction has increased in the past 20 years."

"The concern should not be on this species, but on the fact that every year we seem to be getting more and more exotic species," some of which can threaten the ecology, he said.

-- Naseem Sowti

Famine, Schizophrenia Linked

Scientists have produced new evidence that people conceived during a famine are prone to schizophrenia.