Questions with Alejandro Del-Pozo

Alejandro Del-Pozo, assistant professor of entomology at Virginia Tech University, will discuss the data collected on the box tree moth in Niagara County, New York. From June to October in 2022, a Virginia Tech research team documented the fluctuation of densities for this invasive pest utilizing adult trapping and visual examinations. Additional field observations on the biology and ecology of this insect in its new U.S. invasive range will be shared during this presentation. 

Del Pozo will be returning to Niagara County in early June with his team, and he’s looking forward to presenting some updated data and new findings at Cultivate.  

NM: What can attendees expect to learn at your session? 

AD: The introduction will be the basic biology of the box tree moth, as it has been described in Europe and part of Canada. But the beauty of this presentation is it has local information. We really need to start understanding how this insect has behaves, its life cycle and phenology for us, in the U.S. So not only will we cover biology, but I’m going to present information on the peak of activity for the caterpillars and the adults. We’re trying to get to the point that we can monitor the adults with the pheromone traps that we use. 

Half of the presentation covers our observations. Then, I’m going to finish up talking about the beneficial insects in Western New York to see if there are any correlations. When you have a new invasive species, the beneficial insects are not totally in tune with the new invasives. It takes some time, so we’re going to record that. The first year we did it, the predators were there, but they’re not actually influencing BTM populations yet. But we’re hoping that’s going to change pretty soon. 

NM: Has there been any research around the effect of beneficial insects on box tree moth? 

AD: We have recorded plenty of the spiders that will do the job but are not as significant. There is a different suite of true bugs that are predatory, an older suite of parasitoids present in the system. But they’re parasitizing or preying on something else. I have data that shows that even around the boxwood with psyllids or aphids, for instance, you can see that beautiful textbook example of beneficials being present and lowering those populations. But there is no relationship with the box tree moth. It’s expected, but hopefully we’ll get documentation that it will change. 

NM: Does box tree moth attack all types of boxwood? 

AD: So here’s what we see so far: you’re going to see defoliation on any type of boxwood, no matter what. But what we observed in the field last year is that it’s likely that the English and European lines that have been bred and their different descendants are more prone to heavy defoliation compared to the ones that have Asian parentals. Talking with other experts, it makes sense because box tree moth co-evolved with boxwood in Asia. If a boxwood has Asian parentage, we can definitely see the defoliation is slower. Not necessarily no defoliation at all, but slower. For example, we saw in the field that ‘Winter Gem’ was heavily defoliated and ‘Green Mountain’ was not as heavily defoliated. We’re going to run some trials this year to try to pick up more cultivars and present some choices so we can say definitively that they prefer to eat X, Y and Z. Right now, we have those two we notice consistently through the landscape, but this is all anecdotal.  

Want to go? Tuesday, July 18 at 9:30-10:30 a.m., Room A120