Team:UNebraska-Lincoln/HP/Gold Integrated
UNL 2018 Improving Early Detection of The Emerald Ash Borer
Human Practices
During the beginning stages of our project, we knew we wanted to do our project on creating a more effective bait for Emerald Ash Borer traps, but we had questions about the importance and relevance of our project. We had several interviews and meetings with local arborists to help us fully determine the purpose of our project and guide how we approached public outreach.
The first expert we consulted was arborist Pete Smith, the Urban Forestry Program Manager at the Arbor Day Foundation in Nebraska City. We were able to interview him on June 15, 2018, and had many questions for him about the EAB problem in general and how Nebraska planned to face it. He told us that ash trees killed by the EAB are a danger to communities since they fall over easily. Therefore, communities need to be aware of the movement of the EAB and have a plan for their trees once it arrives in their area. Both treating ash trees with pesticides and cutting down infested trees has a big monetary impact to communities. Pete estimated that there will be a $1 billion impact to Nebraska communities, and it will cost homeowners $1000 to remove and replace each ash tree that is infested. Nebraska does not have a lot of wealthy communities, so being able to detect EAB presence early and develop treatment plans will become increasingly important to communities as it spreads across Nebraska. Our conversation with Pete helped us realized that developing better EAB detection traps is very important to helping communities budget and protect their citizens.
After talking with Pete Smith, he put us in contact with arborist Dr. Eric North, a professor in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Natural Resources and member of the Nebraska Forest Service. We were able to talk with him on June 26, 2018, about our project and the EAB in Nebraska. Dr. North agreed with Pete Smith in stating that early EAB detection is needed because it will make taking care of the EAB problem cheaper. Currently, Nebraska is relying on traps and citizens reporting EAB symptoms in their trees because there is not enough funding to hire experts to systematically look for them. Unfortunately, ash trees do not show symptoms at eye level until after several years of infestation when they begin to die. Without early detection, communities will become overwhelmed by the number of trees they need to remove and not be able to keep up, endangering their citizens and increasing the spread of EAB. Dr. North really impressed upon us the importance of EAB detection traps in helping to protect people and limit the spread of EAB. In addition to helping us realize the importance of our project, Dr. North also supplied us with pamphlets and information that we could use to educate the public about the EAB and endangered ash trees. His information inspired us to focus on education and public engagement activities that we could do to spread EAB awareness.
After confirming the importance of early detection traps, we met with the Nebraska Forest Service on June 29, 2018, to discuss our idea for using 7-epi-sesquithujene as bait in traps. They stressed that the current bait (Z)-3-hexenol used in traps is no more effective in trapping EAB than an actual ash tree. In fact, a trap could be placed in an infested tree and not catch any EAB. They were hopeful that using 7-epi-sesquithujene would be a better bait and encouraged us to pursue its biosynthesis. To help us understand how traps work, they invited us to visit Greenwood, Nebraska, with them to observe infested trees and set up traps.
We visited Greenwood, Nebraska, on August 3, 2018, with Laurie Stepanek, Forest Health Specialist with the Nebraska Forest Service; Steven Jara, Deputy Director of the Nebraska Forest Service; David Nielson, State Survey Coordinator with the Nebraska Department of Agriculture; and Justin Evertson, Assistant Director of the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum. The EAB has been in Greenwood since 2016, so we were able to see visible signs of the EAB infestation in city trees. We also peeled back the bark on some of the branches of ash trees to find the S-shaped path in the wood, distinctive to EAB. David Nielson is in charge of hanging EAB detection traps in Nebraska, and he helped us assemble a trap and hang it in a tree. We were able to see how the bait is contained in a bag that sits at the center of the trap. David informed us that if our project is successful and 7-epi-sesquithujene could be used as bait, then we would replace the bag of (Z)-3-hexenol with a bag of 7-epi-sesquithujene. He also told us that having a more effective bait would allow the size of the traps to be smaller, since they are so large currently only because they are so ineffective. After we set up the trap in Greenwood, we drove back to Lincoln to Mahoney Park to examine a trap that had been hanging for several weeks. The trap had many insects on it, but none of them were the EAB. Gaining first-hand experience working with EAB traps helped understand how we would need to design the rest of our project after we confirmed production of 7-epi-sesquithujene. We learned that we would need to optimize our production protocol to produce enough to be able to purify to use in traps. We would also need to develop an efficient purification method for the sesquiterpene products. This field trip also helped us learn how we can identify the EAB and how to teach others to identify it when we spread awareness of the EAB and ash tree endangerment.
Field Trip to Greenwood
Two weeks after our field trip with the Nebraska Forest Service, the Emerald Ash Borer was confirmed in Lincoln, Nebraska on August 22, 2018. This made us realize how relevant doing an iGEM project on the EAB is. In the duration of our project, the EAB had come to our own city. That made our outreach and EAB awareness efforts extremely relevant since now the people in Lincoln and the surrounding areas will have to personally deal with infestations and tree removals in the upcoming years. This relevance has also made us realize the importance of continuing our research to optimize 7-epi-sesquithujene production to create more effective bait for traps.
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