Steven Munson
Other Forest Service
Forest insects have been a passion of mine for more than 40 years. Did you know that insects and plants communicate using chemical signals? We call these semiochemicals. Insects receive these chemical messages through their antennae. Bark beetles and similar insects produce attractant chemicals, called pheromones, that attract both males and females to a particular tree. This attractant enables the insects to feed and find a mate.
Bark beetles use trees for food and as a place to lay their eggs. When present in large numbers, bark beetles can damage or even kill a tree. Pine trees have a defense against bark beetle attacks. Pine trees will ooze sap out of the holes made by the beetles, in an attempt to push the beetles out. But beetles can overcome this by using pheromones to attract thousands of other beetles to a single tree. Thousands of beetles become too many for the tree to defend itself.
When thousands of beetles attack a tree, however, all of the beetles are competing for food from the same tree. At some point, therefore, the beetles change the chemical signal from an attractant to a repellent. The repellent tells the flying adults to find another tree to attack. SPLAT Verb was developed as a bark beetle repellent.
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