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The balsam woolly adelgid (Adelges piceae) is small wingless insect that infests and kills firs.In their native Europe they are a minor parasite on silver fir and Sicilian fir, but they have become a threat especially to balsam fir and Fraser fir after they were introduced to the United States around the beginning of the 20th century.
Native to Central America, balsam woolly adelgid is a 1-to 2-millimeter-long sap-feeding insect. They are not active insects, but can move via the wind, or being carried by wildlife, firewood or ...
An adult balsam woolly adelgid, a major pest in the Christmas tree industry. The conifer species used and cultivated as Christmas trees are vulnerable to dozens of different pests, most of which cause cosmetic damage to the trees, important in the Christmas tree industry.
The current leading biological control method of hemlock woolly adelgid is Sasajiscymnus tsugae, [originally called Pseudoscymnus tsugae]. [11] S. tsugae is a black lady beetle that is relatively host-specific, feeding only on three known aldegid species, including HWA.
Some species feed on slime molds, but the larvae and adults of the genus Laricobius are predators of woolly adelgids which attack conifers, and species of this genus are used as biological control agents in the United States for control of balsam woolly adelgid and hemlock woolly adelgid. There are 42 species in 4 genera and 3 subfamilies.
While red spruce is common throughout North America, the Fraser fir—a relative of the balsam fir—is found only in the spruce–fir stands of southern Appalachia. [5] In the second half of the 20th century, nearly all of the mature Fraser firs were killed off by the balsam woolly adelgid—a parasite introduced from Europe around 1900. [6]
Balsam woolly adelgid is an insect which devastated the high altitude spruce-fir forests in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee; Hemlock woolly adelgid is an insect that infests eastern and Carolina hemlock; Spongy moth is a defoliating insect that prefers oak, but feeds on hundreds of species
Their rarity is also due to the forests being subject to logging and harvesting during the late 1800s and early 1900s and invasive species like the balsam woolly adelgid beetle killing Fraser-firs ...