Colorado potato beetle
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Colorado potato beetle ( Leptinotarsa decemlineata ) |
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| Leptinotarsa decemlineata | ||||||||||||
| Say , 1824 |
The Colorado potato beetle or potato beetle ( Leptinotarsa decemlineata - for example: "ten- striped light foot ") is a species from the leaf beetle family .
features
Of 7 to 15 millimeters long potato beetle is yellow with its neck shield black spots and has on the elytra are ten dark stripes. In case of danger, the Colorado beetle can excrete a defensive secretion; its conspicuous coloring is therefore interpreted as a warning .
Spread and spread
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The Colorado beetle is widespread around the world today. His home was originally in central Mexico . Large concentrations of these animals were later found in the US state of Colorado . Assuming that it was the beetle's place of origin, it was given its species name, which is still valid in English-speaking countries today: Colorado potato beetle , in German "Colorado potato beetle".
Its original food plant was the prickly nightshade ( Solanum rostratum ), which, like the potato, belongs to the nightshade family and has now also reached Germany as a neophyte . The transition to the potato took place in the course of the advance of white settlers in the USA who planted their potato plantations there.
In Europe it was feared that the Colorado beetle would be introduced with American seed potatoes in 1869 at the latest, and the first sighting took place in 1877 in the port facilities of Liverpool and Rotterdam . In Germany, the first finds for Mülheim am Rhein and Schildau near Torgau are also documented for 1877. Significant efforts to contain the plague were already reported at that time.
In 1887 and 1914 new, larger infestations appeared in Europe. In 1922 the beetle destroyed 250 km² of potato crops around Bordeaux . In 1935 he appeared in Lorraine and Belgium . It was first found in Luxembourg in 1936 and in Switzerland for the first time in 1937 .
food
The Colorado beetle and its larvae feed on parts of the potato plant , hence its German name. Colorado beetles can devour entire fields within a short time . However, other nightshade plants, in particular other useful plants such as eggplant , peppers , tobacco and tomatoes, are also attacked.
development
In June, the beetles lay packets of 20 to 80 yellow eggs on the underside of the leaves of the potato plant. In total there are around 1200 eggs per female. The larvae hatch from the eggs after 3 to 12 days . They are reddish in color and have black spots on the sides and head. The larvae grow up quickly and molt three times. After 2 to 4 weeks, they crawl into the ground to pupate there . After about two more weeks, the Colorado potato beetles hatch, but they remain in the ground for at least a week. One or two generations of beetles occur each year . Colorado beetles hibernate in the ground.
Combat
In 1935, at the suggestion of the Biological Reichsanstalt and the Reichsnährstand, the Potato Beetle Defense Service (KAD) was founded in Germany, which among other things distributed a potato beetle primer to school children. With the slogan “Be a fighter, don't be a sleeper, watch out for the Colorado potato beetle!” Everyone was called upon to fight potato beetles. The schoolchildren even got some time off school to collect the bugs. Search teams were formed in the villages from the unemployed or school children, and before the outbreak of war also from soldiers, to search fields for potato beetles. There were catch rewards and badges of honor. In heavily infested fields, the potato tops were cleared and destroyed, the soil was decontaminated with carbon disulfide , the potato fields in the vicinity were sprayed with lead arsenic , later with calcareous arsenic.
In 1936 a Franco-German working group for the control of Colorado potato beetles was founded in Moutier d'Ahun ( Département Creuse ) , and in 1940 a potato beetle research station was set up in Kruft (Eifel) (later the Institute for Biological Pest Control of the Biological Federal Institute ).
After the end of the war there were soon no more beetle collecting campaigns in the FRG, while schoolchildren in the GDR continued to collect potato beetles until the 1960s.
In Europe the Colorado beetle has no natural predators . It was therefore fought with chemicals (initially arsenic , later insecticides from the group of chlorinated hydrocarbons (HCH and DDT) or the group of synthetic pyrethroids ). Because of the risk of developing pesticide resistance , an integrated control strategy with changing active ingredients is required, taking into account the conditions of use. Infection of the beetles with certain bacterial strains , such as the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis tenebrionis, is also effective .
In 1995 the first bio-collector was built. This pneumatic-mechanical device combats Colorado beetles by blowing the animals off the plants, collecting them and removing them from the fields. This is intended to make insecticides superfluous. However, production of the device was discontinued.
The effects of endosulfan and fipronil were studied in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Several genetically modified potato varieties that are resistant to the Colorado beetle have already been tested. They are predicted to have potential in particular in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Spinosad is a newer insecticide for combating the Colorado potato beetle that is also approved for organic farming .
A common variant of decimation in rural areas is to collect the larvae in a bucket and then empty it in the rain barrel customary in the farm. Since the larvae are unable to swim, they sink immediately and die a few minutes later from drowning or, depending on the depth of the barrel, from the effects of water pressure.
Colorado beetle in propaganda
During the First World War , it was spread in Germany that France intended to endanger the food supply in the German Reich with the targeted reproduction of the beetle.
During the Second World War , both the Nazi regime and the Allies claimed that Colorado beetles had been dropped from planes over the respective enemy territory. While there is no evidence for this, Colorado beetles were demonstrably bred by the German Wehrmacht in 1943 and dropped over the Palatinate (near Speyer) to test their suitability as a biological weapon.
After the Second World War, Colorado beetles multiplied by leaps and bounds in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany until almost half of the agricultural area was infested by 1950. The East German leadership had to master not in a position to the disaster, the plague but used for propaganda -Zwecken in the Cold War by claiming that specially in the USA bred beetles targeted by American planes as a biological weapon to sabotage the socialist Agriculture had been dropped. On June 16, 1950, the headline of the central organ of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), New Germany : Extraordinary Commission finds: USA planes dropped large numbers of Colorado beetles . From 1950 a campaign against the "Amikäfer" or "Colorado beetle", called "Saboteurs in American service", was launched on posters and in numerous media reports. This legend found its way into a poem by Bertolt Brecht .
For the peace
The Ami flyers are flying
silvery in the sky
Colorado beetles lie
in the German field.
As a result, the US government demanded countermeasures from the Federal Republic of Germany. It was decided to send dummy potato beetles made of cardboard with an "F" printed on them for freedom by post to all councils of the GDR municipalities and to drop them from balloons.
There were similar propaganda campaigns in the People's Republic of Poland .
See also
literature
- Oswald de Kerchove de Denterghem: Le Doryphora decemlineata , in: Bulletins d'arboriculture 1877, pp. 239-251.
Web links
- Search for Colorado beetles in the German Digital Library
- Strategy against Colorado beetles
- Habits of the Colorado potato beetle from Gallus Zoll
Individual evidence
- ↑ Historical and local history association of the Werdenberg region: WERDENBERGER YEARBOOK 2008. (PDF) 2008, accessed on August 15, 2019 .
- ↑ Description of the buffalo burdock (host plant) at giftpflanze.com, accessed on April 1, 2016.
- ↑ Agriculture. In: Illustrirte Zeitung , October 2, 1869, p. 10 (online at ANNO ).
- ↑ Which books should the farmer buy? In: The Practical Farmer / The Practical / Practical Farmer / The Practical Farmer. Illustrated agricultural newspaper for everyone , August 29, 1877, p. 9 (online at ANNO ).
- ^ JA Massard: Le Doryphore et le Grand-Duché de Luxembourg (esquisse historique). (PDF) In: Archives de l'Institut grand-ducal de Luxembourg, Section des sciences naturelles, physiques et mathématiques, NS 43. 2000, pp. 175–217 , accessed on January 5, 2016 .
- ↑ Roger Peter: Potato. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 16, 2017 , accessed March 31, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Xiao-qin Shi, Man-Hui Xiong, Wei-Hua Jiang, Zhi-Tian Wang, Wen-Chao Guo, Zhen-Han Xia, Wen-Jun Fu and Guo-Qing Li: Efficacy of endosulfan and fipronil and joint toxic action of endosulfan mixtures against Leptinotarsa decemlineata (Say) . In: Journal of Pest Science . April 25, 2012, doi : 10.1007 / s10340-012-0437-y .
- ↑ Herrmann, Bernd: Scenes and topics of environmental history: Environmental history mishaps from the graduate school . Workshop report. Ed .: Universitätsdrucke Göttingen. 2009, ISBN 978-3-941875-63-0 , pp. 95 f .
- ^ Potato History and Stories. April 10, 2008, accessed January 5, 2016 .
- ↑ Bio-Collector 2 Plant protection in potato cultivation against Colorado beetles. August 19, 2013, accessed May 24, 2020 .
- ↑ FiBL : Colorado beetle: Neem and Spinosad approved with immediate effect. bioaktuell.ch, June 13, 2018, accessed on November 9, 2018 .
- ↑ a b Klaus Körner: Political Brochures in the Cold War (1947 to 1963). In: SBZ from A to Z - A pocket and reference book about the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany. German Historical Museum , accessed on January 5, 2016 .
- ↑ Colorado beetle - a pest with a history. Industrieverband Agrar e. V., July 19, 2013, accessed January 5, 2016 .
- ↑ maintenance, Amikäfer. Documents on the Colorado beetle drop . Berlin 1950.
- ↑ Monthly magazine G / Geschichte, No. 6/2020, p. 13, article: Eine vorräßige Biowaffe des Westens , ISSN 1617-9412 , B7276
- ↑ The beetle weapon, right ? - in DZ No. 33/2002, p. 27.
- ↑ "The Amikäfer" - special exhibition in the school museum Lohr-Sendelbach 2010/2011.
- ↑ Jak stonka rozpętała trzecią wojnę (Polish).