Page 3 - Impact Fall 2023

Fungi’s hidden role in the Emerald Ash Borer crisis
Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) beetles are an invasive species deadly to Minnesota’s ash trees. New research from the Department of Plant Pathology shows certain fungi associated with EAB beetles play a role in accelerating damage, but fungi are also a promising potential solution to curtailing EAB’s spread. Professor Robert Blanchette and several PhD students study Minnesota’s cities, state parks, and forests to find fungal connections between EAB and the rapid ash tree decline.
Found in Minnesota in 2009, this invasive species spread and moved rapidly through the Twin Cities to state parks and rural land, in part from the transport of beetle-infested firewood.
“In our urban forests, ash trees can make up 20 to 25 percent of the total tree canopy,” said PhD student Colin Peters. “Imagine one in four trees in a city dying rapidly. That’s the scale of the problem we face.”
It’s easy to spot EAB galleries (the wood carvings beetles leave in trees after feeding and where they dwell as larvae) under cracked bark, and in summer you can see the insects themselves. But a variety of microscopic fungi— impossible to find without proper laboratory equipment—also live around the beetles.
“Most [previous] studies of EAB center on the pest and the damage it does, but there was no previous work about the fungi associated with it,” said PhD student Sofia Simeto. Blanchette Lab students have found different fungi that play varying roles in the beetle-tree interaction, including decay fungi which accelerate ash tree degradation, entomopathogenic fungi which infect and kill the beetles, and others.
Peters’s work includes developing devices to bait, trap, and infect EAB beetles with fungi and injecting those fungi into trees. “These fungi are indigenous to Minnesota,” he said. “We want to see if we can increase the fungi concentration so they can cause, essentially, ‘epidemics’ in EAB populations, and use them to slow the beetles’ spread.”
According to Blanchette, his students are pioneers in this kind of study. “I think their results will have a great impact on saving natural resources here and throughout the country,” he said.
 Read the full story at z.umn.edu/fungi-emerald-ash-borer
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