- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's about 150 years old, 50 feet in height, and measures about five feet in diameter. And it's dying.
What's killing it is thousand cankers disease (TCD), an emerging insect-fungus complex.
It's killing a lot of black walnut trees.
In fact, TCD has caused profound damage to black walnut trees not only in urban areas of California and other western states, but in Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia, according to a newly published review by UC Davis-affiliated scientists and their colleagues.
The article, “Status and Impact of Walnut Twig Beetle in Urban Forest, Orchard and Native Forest Ecosystems,” published in the Journal of Forestry, updates the spread of the disease, and chronicles the role of the bark beetle, Pityophthorus juglandis, and the canker-producing fungus, Geosmithia morbida, in killing walnut trees, especially black walnuts.
Native to southwestern United States and northern Mexico, the bark beetle, about half the size of a grain of rice, “has invaded urban, orchard and native forest habitats throughout the United States, as well as Italy,” said lead author and forest entomologist Steven Seybold of the Pacific Southwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Davis, and a lecturer and researcher with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Walnut twig beetles (WTB) tunnel into branches and trunks of walnut (Juglans) where they create galleries for mating and reproduction. They carry spores of the fungus into their galleries, and the resulting fungal infection causes formation of cankers, which coalesce and girdle branches and stems.
“The walnut twig beetle is a significant pest of very large trees because it sequentially attacks the small branches--though ironically not the twigs--all the way down the trunk to the soil line,” said Seybold, a pioneering scientist of TCD, who first found TCD evidence in Davis in 2008. “Most bark beetle species are not this thorough in using all of the phloem tissue in their plant hosts. In Davis right now, in the courtyard next to Sophia's Thai Restaurant, 129 E St, the tiny beetle is gradually killing the largest northern California black walnut tree in the city. It has taken nearly a decade, but the crown of the massive tree is nearly completed killed.”
Seybold estimated that the E Street tree is about 150 years old, "maybe older." It measures almost 65 inches or just over five feet.
Seybold noted that the disease is “unique because of its multifaceted negative impact on walnut trees involved in landscaping, food production, and forestry. Walnut trees are valuable ecologically and for food and timber, so the walnut twig beetle is a good model in which to study the impact of a bark beetle on forest and agro-ecosystem services.”
The five co-authors of the synthesis article include Stacy Hishinuma and Andrew Graves, two USDA forest entomologists with UC Davis connections. Hishinuma, who works in the Pacific Southwest Region, San Bernardino, and holds a doctorate in entomology from UC Davis, studied in the Seybold and Mary Lou Flint labs, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Graves, who works in the Southwestern Region, Albuquerque, N.M., is a former postdoctoral fellow in the UC Davis Department of Plant Pathology.
Other co-authors are Professor William Klingeman III of the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Tennessee, and forest entomologist Tom Coleman with the USDA Forest Service's Southern Region, Asheville, N.C..
UC Davis doctoral student Jackson Audley of the Seybold lab and Richard Bostock lab (Plant Pathology), contributed photos of dead and dying walnut trees in the Davis area, along with UC Davis doctoral student Corwin Parker and Hishinuma. Audley, who is researching an ensemble of behavioral chemicals that repel the walnut twig beetle from landing on English walnut trees, conducts his research in a commercial orchard near Winters.
“WTB is one of a few invasive bark beetles in North America where expanding distribution and impact have been pronounced enough to affect other species, communities, and ecosystems to the extent that services provided by urban forests, agroecosystems, and wildland areas have been altered,” the co-authors concluded in their paper. “We envision that ecological impacts of WTB will continue to unfold across a wider geographic area to affect various types of key services, i.e., provisioning (e.g., timber and nontimber products); regulating (e.g., air and water quality/quantity, climate regulation); and cultural (e.g., recreation, aesthetics, shade) services.”
Scientists first collected the beetle in North America in 1896 in New Mexico, 1907 in Arizona, 1959 in California, and 1960 in Mexico, but never considered it a major pest of walnut trees until black walnuts began deteriorating and dying in New Mexico in the early 2000s. Walnut tree mortality that occurred in the early 1990s in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah and in the Willamette Valley of Oregon is now attributed to TCD.
“Currently, good cultural practices and sanitation of infested materials are the primary strategies for disease management within orchards and also for prevention of spread of the disease and vector to regions with low rates of infection,” according to the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM)>
UC IPM recommends that trees with less than 50 percent live crown be removed to reduce the buildup of walnut twig beetles and inoculum in the trunk and larger scaffold branches. "Chemical control with either fungicides or insecticides is not recommended for management of thousand cankers disease," UC IPM says.
Which brings us back to the massive black walnut tree that is dying on E Street in Davis. If it dates back to 1868, that's the year the city of Davis was founded. Its namesake, Jerome C. Davis, owned a stock farm on the site.
Who was in the White House and who was in the California governor's mansion that year? Andrew Johnson and Henry Haight, respectively. That was also the year that trustees founded the University of California in Oakland; Clark Kerr became the first president. And 1868 was the year Memorial Day was first observed in the United States...and when author Louisa May Alcott published the first volume of her coming-of-age novel, Little Women.
The little tree in Davis became of age, too, growing into a giant tree offering shade, shelter and sustenance. Who would have thought that a tiny insect, half the size of a grain of rice, would play a major role in its demise?
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's about the size of a grain of rice but it's a killer.
That's the walnut twig beetle, Pityophthorus juglandis, which in association with a newly described fungus, Geosmithia morbida, causes thousand cankers disease, wreaking havoc on native black walnut trees.
Enter doctoral student Jackson Audley of the Steve Seybold lab, UC Department of Entomology and Nematology. He will present a seminar on "Protecting Trees from Bark Beetle Attacks Utilizing Semiochemical Repellents: A Case Study with the Walnut Twig Beetle” at a seminar from 4 to 5 p.m., today (Wednesday, Oct. 25) in Room 3001 of the Plant and Environmental Science Building.
The seminar is part of the UC Davis Forest Biology Research Center Seminar Series and his presentation is a preview of his thesis project.
"In this talk I will discuss the theoretical construct of semiochemical repellents for protecting trees from attack by bark beetles and demonstrate the process of developing a repellent tool with my work on the walnut twig beetle, Pityophthorus juglandis, the vector of thousand cankers disease in walnuts," Audley says in his abstract. "Bark beetles can constitute a significant threat to tree health and are a significant disturbance agent in forest ecosystems. Semiochemicals have been successfully utilized to protect individual to stands of susceptible trees from various bark beetle pests. Most of this work has been conducted in coniferophagous bark beetle systems. My work here at UC Davis has been focused on bringing those same techniques into studying an invasive, hardwood-attacking bark beetle system."
Audley received his bachelor's degree in wildlife biology and natural resource recreation and tourism in 2009 from the University of Georgia, and his master's degree in forestry in 2015 from the University of Tennessee. As a master's student, he did research on the walnut twig beetle, including treatment tests.
The walnut twig beetle is believed to be native to Arizona, California, New Mexico and Mexico. In 2006, plant pathologist Ned Tisserat and entomologist Whitney Cranshaw of Colorado State University identified the pathogen in declining black walnut trees in central Colorado. The disease has now spread throughout much of the United States.
"Often the first symptoms of thousand cankers disease (TCD) are flagging and yellowing leaves and branch dieback," says Seybold, one of the pioneering TCD researchers. He is a chemical ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Davis, and a lecturer/researcher with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. "Affected branches show sap staining and pinhole-sized beetle holes. Beneath the surface are dark stains caused by the fungus."
"The fungus enters the tree through the feeding or reproductive activities of the beetle, and colonizes and kills the phloem and cambium of the branches and main stem," according to the UC Integrated Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program website, content that's the work of Steve Seybold and entomologist Mary Lou Flint, then associate director of of Urban and Community IPM, and now UC Extension entomologist emerita. The disease gets its name from the large number of dark cankers that rapidly develop on affected branches.
The UC Davis Forest Biology Research Seminars, which began Oct. 11, are held Wednesdays at 4 p.m. in Room 3001 of the Plant and Environmental Science Building.
The remaining schedule includes:
Nov. 1 – Alison Scott, postdoctoral student, UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, “The Polyploid Origin and Evolutionary History of California Redwoods”
Nov. 15 – Brian Smithers, Ph.D student, Ecology Graduate Group, "Mechanisms of Range Shifts in Great Basin Sub‐Alpine Bristlecone Pine Forests."
Nov. 29 – Sarah Bisbing, assistant professor, Forest Ecosystem Science, Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, University of Nevada, Reno, "Looking Backward to See Forward: Causes and Consequences of Altered Disturbance and Climate on Western Conifer Forests.”
Dec. 6 ‐ Ryan Tompkins, Forest Silviculturist, U.S. Forest Service/Plumas National Forest, “Sierra Nevada Silviculture in the New World Order: Challenges, Uncertainties, and Opportunities”
For more information, contact David Neale at dbneale@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
No wonder. The insect, measuring about 1.5 millimeters long, is much smaller than a grain of rice.
Now, however, they can see a teddy-bear-sized version, thanks to a University of California, Davis entomology major Kristina Tatiossian, a member of the Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology.
Through the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, Tatiossian, a junior, crafted a ceramic mosaic sculpture of the tiny walnut twig beetle for her research poster, “Flight Response of the Walnut Twig Beetle, Pityophthorus juglandis, to Aggregation Pheromones Produced by Low Densities of Males.”
The beetle jutting from the poster is so true to form that scientists studying the insect not only readily recognize it, but point out that it’s a female. That includes her mentor, chemical ecologist and forest entomologist Steve Seybold of the Davis-based Pacific Southwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, and an affiliate of the UC Davis Department of Entomology.
Seybold and Andrew Graves, a former UC Davis researcher with the UC Davis Department of Plant Pathology, who now works for the USDA Forest Service, first detected the newly recognized beetle-fungus disease, known as Thousand Cankers Disease (TCD), in California in 2008. TCD had been detected earlier in Colorado and its impact had been noted even earlier in New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah. TCD and its history are chronicled in a newly revised “Pest Alert” issued by the USDA Forest Service.
Tatiossian accomplished the research project as part of the Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology, which aims to provide undergraduates with a closely mentored research experience in biology. Headed by professor Jay Rosenheim, and assistant professor Louie Yang of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, the program currently has 12 students; students apply when they are freshmen, sophomores or transfer students. Tatiossian joined the program in 2011 and is mentored by Steve Seybold.
Tatiossian completed the ceramic mosaic project over a four-week period. She earlier worked on two UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program projects, including the “Tree of Life,” with the program’s founders, entomologist/artist Diane Ullman and artist Donna Billick. A former Los Angeles resident, Tatiossian will receive her bachelor’s degree in entomology this June and then plans to attend graduate school to study either biochemistry or virology.
Tatiossian will giving an oral presentation on her research at the Pacific Branch, ESA meeting, set for April 7-10 at South Lake Tahoe. Then she will display the poster again in the Undergraduate Research Conference at UC Davis on April 24 in Wellman Hall.
By itself, the beetle, native to Arizona, California, New Mexico and Mexico, does little or no damage. But when coupled with the newly described fungus, Geosmithia morbida, it is killing thousands of walnut trees.
The disease is creating havoc throughout much of the western United States, Seybold said, and is now heading east. Its primary host is the black walnut tree but it also attacks other walnut trees.
“Male WTB initiate new galleries and produce an aggregation pheromone, which can be used to study patterns of initial host colonization behavior of WTB. It has been previously shown by Graves and colleagues (2010) that as the number of males in a branch is increased from 20 to 200, the flight response of males and females is similarly increased,” she wrote. “We investigated flight responses to lower numbers of males in cut branch sections of northern California black walnut, Juglans hindsii.”
Her objective: “To determine the minimum number of males in an artificially infested branch of Juglans hindsii necessary to elicit a flight response from WTB.” She found that as little as one to five males is enough to elicit the aggregation response at her field study sites at two locations in Davis.
The poster will be displayed on the third floor of Briggs Hall, just outside the Department of Entomology’s administration office.
On her poster, Tatiossian credits Seybold; Extension entomologist Mary Louise Flint, associate director for Urban and Community IPM, UC Statewide Integrated Pest Program; entomology graduate student Stacy Hishinuma, and postdoctoral researcher Yigen Chen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology.
And the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program where the tiny walnut twig beetle sprang to life.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Chemical ecologist and forest entomologist of Steve Seybold of the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Davis, Calif., and a faculty affiliate of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, is leading a research group to characterize the disease in California.
A new member of the team is UC Davis entomology graduate student Stacy Hishinuma (right), who just received a McBeth Memorial Scholarship to help fund her research.
TCD is caused by the walnut twig beetle, Pityopthorus juglandis, in association with a newly described fungus, Geosmithia morbida.
“The beetle is believed to be native to Arizona, California, New Mexico and Mexico,” Hishinuma said, “but was never associated with walnut tree mortality until just recently.”
The disease was first noticed in canker-riddled black walnuts in Utah and Oregon in the early 1990s, but scientists attributed that to environmental stress. In 2006, plant pathologist Ned Tisserat and entomologist Whitney Cranshaw of Colorado State University identified the pathogen in declining black walnut trees in central Colorado. TCD is now found in eight western states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington), plus Tennessee.
“My project focuses on understanding more about the biology of the beetle and fungus and documenting the frequency and progression of TCD in various walnut species throughout California,” Hishinuma said. “The McBeth scholarship is funding my travel to field sites across California.”
Hishinuma, who is seeking her master’s degree in entomology, works with major professor and integrated pest management (IPM) specialist Mary Lou Flint and is co-advised by Seybold. Flint, with the statewide UC IPM Program, is the associate director for urban and community IPM, and a Department of Entomology extension specialist.
The fungus enters the tree when the beetle tunnels into the bark to prepare egg galleries. “The fungus is probably carried as conidia on the beetle’s elytra or wing covers,” said Seybold, who has been studying the chemical ecology and behavior of bark beetles for more than 25 years.
Scientists believe that TCD occurs only on walnut, predominantly native black walnut, Juglans californica and J. hindsii, although the disease has been recorded on 10 species of walnuts or their hybrids in California. Often the first symptoms of TCD are flagging and yellowing leaves and branch dieback, Seybold said. Affected branches show sap staining and pinhole-sized beetle holes. Beneath the surface are dark stains caused by the fungus.
A tree can survive the stress produced by a few cankers, but when high populations of the beetle enter the tree and the numerous small cankers coalesce, the disease girdles twigs and branches. Eventually TCD attacks the main stem of the weakened tree down to the soil line.
Last summer, a USDA/UC Davis research team began tracking the pathogen and the beetle throughout the state, particularly in commercial orchards.
To prevent spread, infected trees should be removed and destroyed immediately by grinding or burning to ensure that beetles are destroyed, Seybold said. Infested walnut for chips, firewood, or woodworking should not be moved to new areas. Possible detections can be reported to the local agricultural commissioner’s office or to the local UC Cooperative Extension office.
Hishinuma, from Burbank, completed her undergraduate work at UC Davis in animal biology, with an entomology emphasis. She began her graduate studies this fall after working for a year in southern California assisting with research on the goldspotted oak borer, a relatively new pest in southern California that kills oak trees. Beetle-infested firewood contributes to the problem, as it does with thousand cankers disease.
The McBeth Memorial Scholarship was established in 1986 by Barbara McBeth Woodruff (1924-2007) in honor of her parents, Ira Guy McBeth and Rose McBeth, and her sister Frances McBeth Black. Ira Guy McBeth, an entomologist who received his doctorate from the University of California in 1915, made notable contributions to the citrus industry and served as an executive in agricultural, chemical and development companies.
Meanwhile, a thousand questions about thousand cankers disease...and maybe soon...solutions.
Related Links:
Steve Seybold discussed thousand cankers disease in a seminar presented May 19, 2010 to the UC Davis Department of Entomology. The seminar was webcast and is archived on the entomology website. (USDA Forest Service Pest Alert on Thousand Cankers Disease of Walnut (targeting eastern U.S. region). (May 2010)
UC IPM website (Authors: Andrew Graves, postdoctoral researcher, formerly with the UC Davis Department of Plant Pathology; Mary Louise Flint, UC IPM Program and Department of Entomology, UC Davis; Tom Coleman, USDA Forest Service, Forest Health Protection, San Bernardino; and Steven Seybold, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Davis)
Detected in Tennessee (News release, Aug. 9, 2010, UC Davis Department of Entomology website)
Detected in California (News release, July 2, 2010, UC Davis Department of Entomology website)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Thousand cankers disease, which infects and kills black walnut trees, has spread from the western United States to the eastern United States.
Officials announced Aug. 5 that the disease has been detected in Knox County in east Tennessee. This marks the first detection of the disease east of the Mississippi River.
Previously, the disease was known to eight western states: Arizona, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
And now, Tennessee. It's probably in other states across the Great Plains and east of the Mississippi River, as well.
The disease, caused by the walnut twig beetle (Pityophthorus juglandis) in association with a newly described fungus with the proposed name of Geosmithia morbida), occurs only on walnut species. Eastern black walnut is one of the most susceptible species.
By itself, the walnut twig beetle doesn't present a major problem. Together they wreak havoc.
A pest alert, distributed by the U.S. Forest Service and co-authored by Davis-based researcher Steve Seybold, is sounding the alarm
Seybold, research entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Davis, and a faculty affiliate of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, says the disease symptoms to watch for are branch mortality; numerous small cankers on branches and the main stem of the tree; and the entry and exit holes of the tiny bark beetles. (See news article on presence of the disease in Davis.)
In an attempt to stop the spreading of the disease, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture (TDA) plans to quarantine Knox County to prohibit the movement of firewood and black walnut nursery stock and to limit the movement of black walnut timberland.
The TDA's Division of Forestry estimates that the state has 26 million black walnut trees (both on public and private land). They are valued as high as $1.47 billion.
That's "billion" with a "B."
The losses would be more than monetary, though.
We received a telephone call from a Washington state resident today who is worried--and rightfully so--that his two 100-year-old majestic black walnut trees might contract the disease.
And to think that they could be felled by this duo: a fungus hitching a ride on a tiny walnut twig beetle boring into a tree.
It's a beetle that's smaller than a grain of rice.
