The primary purpose of this project is to support the efforts ofregulatory agencies (USDA-aphis, caps, US forest service, state agencies) to detect and prevent economically dangerous species of exotic…

This $123,814 cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will support the development and delivery of pheromone-based detection and monitoring tools for economically dangerous exotic wood-boring cerambycid beetles. Funded under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care federal grant program, key deliverables include new cost-effective pheromone traps and lures to help regulatory agencies and their partners conduct early detection of invasive woodborers across six continents. Additionally, the agreement effective September 1, 2022 provides $40,000 to sub-awardee University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to collect native cerambycid specimens for pheromone screening and live samples for extract preparation, furthering the goal of developing species-specific detection tools.

The primary purpose of this project is to support the efforts ofregulatory agencies (USDA-aphis, caps, US forest service, state agencies) to detect and prevent economically dangerous species of exotic wood-boring cerambycid beetles from entering and becomingestablished in north america, including eradication of localizedinvasions. Activities will include field trial testing of newly identified compounds, as they become available on multiple continents as many closely related species of cerambycids use the samepheromone components (even those on different continents) forattraction. This project leverages a large network of researchers toisolate, identify and field test attractants for cerambycid species FROM6 continents. Deliverables for this project include: a) cost-effectivenew pheromone-based tools for detection, monitoring, control, anderadication of invasive wood-boring beetles, B) effective operationalprotocols for use of these pheromone-based tools, along with thetransfer of to stake-holders, and C) transfer of technology to pheromoneproducts companies so that traps and lures will be commercialized andin-turn become readily available to end users. This research willsupport efforts of caps, and its collaborating federal, state and localagencies, to provide early detection tools for these potentiallyinvasive woodborers. As a part of this project, a subagreement with DR.lawrence hanks at university of illinois at urbana-champaign (theco-principal investigator) will be executed to collect endemiccerambycid species in order to screen cerambycid pheromones identifiedfrom species on other continents and to collect live specimens of northamerican species with fermenting baits, for preparation of pheromoneextracts.