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The brown marmorated stinkbug (Halyomorpha halys) is an introduced plant pest from Asia that has invaded parts of the US (first seen in 1998), Europe, and perhaps other places.
Since it was introduced without its natural predators and can feed off a variety of crops plants it has done quite well in the US causing as much as 37 million dollars of crop damage to Mid-Atlantic apple growers.
In the winter it can also invade homes to overwinter and make itself annoying to people directly.
Scientists have been investigating how it might be controlled by the intentional introduction of of other insects that would predate upon it.
An important candidate species is the samurai wasp (Trissolcus japonicus), a parasitoid wasp which lays its eggs in the eggs of the marmorated stinkbug and eats them from the inside out.
Normally, in the US, such introductions would have to be carefully tested to ensure the introduced predator would not have unintended effects on other parts of the environment (many such screw-ups are well documented, for example).
However, this Science magazine news article describes how the samurai wasp has recently turned up in several places in the US, producing naturally occurring field tests of its effects on the stinkbug and the larger environment.
Since it was introduced without its natural predators and can feed off a variety of crops plants it has done quite well in the US causing as much as 37 million dollars of crop damage to Mid-Atlantic apple growers.
In the winter it can also invade homes to overwinter and make itself annoying to people directly.
Scientists have been investigating how it might be controlled by the intentional introduction of of other insects that would predate upon it.
An important candidate species is the samurai wasp (Trissolcus japonicus), a parasitoid wasp which lays its eggs in the eggs of the marmorated stinkbug and eats them from the inside out.
Normally, in the US, such introductions would have to be carefully tested to ensure the introduced predator would not have unintended effects on other parts of the environment (many such screw-ups are well documented, for example).
However, this Science magazine news article describes how the samurai wasp has recently turned up in several places in the US, producing naturally occurring field tests of its effects on the stinkbug and the larger environment.