These small bugs are creating big problems. Somehow two distructive species of Asian ambrosia beetles have made their way to North Carolinian trees. These beetles kill ecologically important trees like sassafras, redbay, and pondberry. Not only are the bettles a threat to ecology, but also the economy. Ambrosia beetles enjoy to ravage avacado orchards along with peach, plum, peacan and dogwood trees. They kill the trees by distroying the important parts of tree trunks. Ambrosia dont actually eat wood at all. They make the tree there home by digging into it and planting a fungus in the tunnels. As the fungus grows it takes away the trees nutrients. Usually they are not a problem because they only do this in dead or rotting trees because of a chemical that they are attracted to in dead trees. Somehow these bettles crossed the ocean and ended up here, probably through a crate and so they get confused in their new environment and kill living trees on accident. This is not yet a problem but there are 3,500 different species and only two of them survived the journey. Eventually the issue will grow so what can we do to prevent the killing of all these important trees?
I believe this is an issue that Scientists should really look into. If these small bugs continue to kill off all the trees people are going to begin to hurt financially. Many people really on the growth of the trees for their income. I think it's crazy how they have somehow traveled across the entire ocean and ended up here. Maybe it really is a small world.
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