Host plant selection and performance of ambrosia beetles in flood-stressed versus ethanol-injected trees provide implications for management strategies

Abstract

Ambrosia beetles (Curculionidae: Scolytinae and Platypodinae) are fungus-farming woodborers that can cause damage to the trees they colonize. Some of these beetles target stressed plants that emit ethanol, and management strategies have proposed using ethanol-injected trees as trap trees to monitor or divert dispersing adult females away from valuable crops. In this study, we used container-grown trees from 8 species to compare the effect of ethanol injection versus flooding on ambrosia beetle host selection and colonization success. Our aims were to understand whether ethanol injection is a suitable technique for different ambrosia beetle species and whether its effectiveness varies depending on the tree species used. In addition, we quantified the amount of ethanol in tree tissues to understand whether ethanol concentration could reflect observed differences among treatments and tree species. Our findings demonstrated that ethanol-injected trees were significantly more selected by both Xyleborinus saxesenii and Xylosandrus spp. and that significantly more adult beetles of both taxa emerged from ethanol-injected than flood-stressed trees. In addition, we showed that ethanol injection can trigger attacks by X. saxesenii and Xylosandrus spp. on a variety of deciduous tree species, nullifying the effects of the species-specific characteristics observed on flood-stressed trees, which can only partially be attributed to the amount of ethanol within the plant. This supported the idea that practitioners can potentially select any species of deciduous trees in management programs for ambrosia beetles based on ethanol-injected trees.