Localized Spatial and Temporal Attack Dynamics of the Mountain Pine Beetle inLodgepole Pine

摘要

Colonization of a host tree by the mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae)involves chemical communication that enables a massive aggregation of beetles on a single resource, thereby ensuring host death and subsequent beetle population survival. Beetle populations have evolved a mechanism for termination of colonization on a lodgepole pine tree at optimal beetle densities, with a concomitant switch of attacks to nearby trees. Observations of the daily spatial and temporal attack process of mountain pine beetles (nonepidemic) attacking lodgepole pine suggest that beetles switch attacks to a new host tree before the original focus tree is fully colonized, and that verbenone, an antiaggregating pheromone, may be acting within a tree rather than between trees.