The bugs' presence wouldn't be so concerning if they didn't already have a terrifying destruction record. When it comes to the coconut beetles, which are native to Southeast Asia, officials aren't sure how they made it to Hawaii in the first place, though they were most likely carried over via aircraft. And then there's one of the world's most successful and deadly invasive species: the dreaded house cat (no joke).
Hawaii is no stranger to harmful invaders. The fire tree is known to outcompete important plants in the islands' ecosystems, and little fire ants not only attack crops, but also people. "Since this beetle is more massive than other species, the acoustic frequency is less likely to be confused with other species," he said. One of the challenges is to distinguish the signature songs of this species above all the other noises of the night. This would be a great help in cutting off the insects' attempts to spread across the island. We are pleased to announce a new article on Featured Creatures Take a sneak peek with this excerpt from the article: Oryctes rhinoceros (L. In the end, the researchers hope that listening to the beetles' nightly activities will allow them to identify what they're up to and where they may be going, and perhaps even predict their upcoming movements. Through laboratory studies, the researchers have already been able to characterise the sound signature of a distress chirp. The goal is to try to match noises to different behaviors, in males versus females, and at different life stages of the bugs. "Stridulation, or chirping, sounds produced by the beetles have been reported with respect to mating and aggressive male behaviour," Allen said in a press release. Their logic: if we can't spot the beetles to watch over their behaviour, maybe we can listen in on their activity instead.
University of Hawaii scientist John Allen and his team have been working on using acoustic detection to identify the sounds made by the beetles, including the noise of their wings in flight and the sounds they make to communicate with each other. That makes them a danger to agriculture as well as the surrounding ecosystems, not to mention a threat to some of the state's most iconic foliage (this may sound trivial, but tourism is a big deal for Hawaii). They're also known to go after crops such as bananas, sugarcane and date palms. During the 25 th International Congress of Entomology (ICE) in Orlando, Florida, which took place from 2530 September 2016 the largest gathering of its kind ever held scientists met in a special symposium to find answers to the problem of scarab beetles an invasive species that is currently spreading around the globe. So far, the bugs don't appear to have spread much farther – and officials want to keep it that way.Ĭoconut rhinoceros beetles have a nasty habit of digging into the tops of palm trees to get at the tasty sap within, damaging and even killing the trees in the process. This was the first record of the species in the Hawaiian Islands, and since then, two breeding sites have been identified on golf courses at the base. In December of 2013, a pest trap at the Pearl Harbor military base in Honolulu caught a single adult beetle.
Both males and females have a disticntive "horn", though the male's horn is more than twice as long as the female's. The Asiatic rhinoceros beetle or coconut rhinoceros beetle ( Oryctes rhinoceros).
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