Jeff Dodson, MG 2014
Hello Everyone from the Clinic Desk,
As you may remember from a few Weeders Digests ago, the
clinic received an insect sample from a walk-in client who had found it in his
house after discovering a small pile of sawdust under a quarter-inch hole in an
item of furniture.
The
insect was a beetle and readily identifiable as belonging to the longhorn
beetle family by its remarkably long antennae.
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| Photo by Jeff Dodson |
Not only had no one in clinic ever seen anything like it, but after
extensive research we could not identify it to genus. The proper course of action for a Master
Gardener clinician faced with this situation is to get more expert help. Merrill Peterson, our WWU entomologist, was
contacted as well as the diagnosticians at the Washington State University Puyallup Plant and Insect Diagnostic Laboratory. The most current information we had regarding
the insect sample was passed along to them as well as photographs showing as
much physical details as we could of the beetle. Like us, Merrill was stumped so we hung our
hopes on the Diagnostic Laboratory.
At this point we had followed the suggested course of action
from the webinar that can be found here. This is a terrific source of education that can be viewed in
about two hours and is applicable toward the Continuing Education requirement
for Master Gardeners. An excellent
speaker and an extremely qualified entomologist, Todd Murray, (who was once
counted among the staff at the Whatcom County Extension Office) presents “First
Detector Training: The Bugs That Ate WA State” in which he introduces the
proper path to take when confronted by a sample of an unknown insect. Raquel Crosier, Executive Director of the
Washington Invasive Species Council, then completes the instruction in her
segment, “Report a Pest.” The best way I can think of to educate oneself on the “who, what, where,
when and why” of submitting a sample to these experts is by experiencing this
webinar. Please consider doing this. Remember that this and other webinars are
archived and can be accessed at your convenience.
In the end, our boring beetle was identified as Stromatium longicorne. It doesn’t have a common name. Although somewhat rare, it is not considered
an invasive species.
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| Click for source |
Coincidentally, the last time it was reported in the state
of Washington was in Whatcom County. In that case it had emerged from a wooden lamp. Our
client’s furniture had been painted after construction and so the most likely
scenario is that an adult laid her eggs in the tree that was later harvested
for timber and then used to build the furniture that our client then
bought. Because a larva of this insect
can live 3-7 years as an immature before pupating, it probably had been present
in his cabinet for as long as our client owned it. Once it had completed its metamorphosis into
an adult beetle, it bored its way out of the furniture, ready to do what adult
longhorn beetles do.
It is nice to put this one to rest.
Best regards to all,
Jeff