.. and Africa.
by Doctor Science
Like many people in the mid-Atlantic US, I’ve been noticing a lot of stink bugs this summer. I figured there was some kind of weather-related stink bug boom until a story about them popped up on the NY Times. It turns out that these are actually new and different stink bugs, a recent accidental arrival from China. Most species that are introduced to a new continent don’t make it, but when they do they can run wild, run free! and be extremely destructive away from their home-grown predators and parasites. Researchers are looking into introducing stink-bug-specialist parasitic wasps to control them, but that will take several years — and it looks as though the wasps are killed by agricultural insecticides to which stink bugs are naturally resistant. Oops.
But what does this have to do with Africa?