Bamboozling the bark beetles
Monday, August 31, 2020 - 12:00
in Biology & Nature
The forest is struggling to cope with the largest bark beetle plague in 70 years. While the trees are suffering due to the heat and the drought, the pests are proliferating rampantly in the warm weather: A pair of European spruce bark beetles, for example, can produce up to 30,000 offspring. Starting in 2004 and most recently in the joint project "bioProtect" (2015-2020), Professor Michael Müller, holder of the Chair of Forest Protection at TU Dresden, and his team have developed a method to regulate the beetles in an environmentally-friendly way. The project partners included the Department of Forest Zoology and Forest Conservation of the Georg-August-University Göttingen and the Ostdeutsche Gesellschaft für Forstplanung mbH.