A Manx shearwater chick was recently discovered on a Maine island.
(Usfws Photo)
The Green Blog
Excerpts from the Globe’s environmental blog.
It’s the curse of pesticides: They can kill more than just pests. But at Northeastern University, researchers are meeting success with a more natural form of critter control.
Rebeca Rosengaus, associate professor of biology, along with former Northeastern postdoctoral fellow Mark Bulmer and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have figured out a way, potentially, to control termites using nothing more than a sugar molecule.
The researchers knew a tropical termite species can survive even in bacteria- and fungi-ridden nests. It turns out, the scientists discovered, that the termites’ saliva and fecal matter contain a protein that destroys those bacteria and fungi.
But if researchers fed termites a glucose derivative, known as GDL, it inhibited the fungus-fighting proteins.
Termites fed GDL in a lab died five days after being exposed to a fungus, while 70 percent of those not fed GDL and exposed were still alive 12 days later.
The work was reported recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Such an approach could be used to combat the $30 billion in damage that termites cause to homes, businesses, and crops each year. Today, termites are often fought with chemicals that can spread to waterways and into living organisms.
Rosengaus will continue experimenting with the molecule, especially in urban areas, where termites are a particular problem.
“We’re far away from saying this is the future of pest control,’’ she said. “But it seems a very appealing alternative strategy.’’
Chick marks rare milestone
Matinicus Rock, an island off Maine’s midcoast, has the distinction of being Maine’s most diverse seabird nesting island.Still, researchers got a huge surprise this month when they found a young Manx shearwater bird on the island - the first time a chick of the species is known to have reached an age old enough to fly in the United States.
Researchers from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Audubon Society discovered the chick in a relatively shallow burrow. At first they thought it was an adult: Shearwaters have been observed on the island, part of the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge, for 12 years.
But on closer examination, they found remnant patches of fluffy light gray down around the legs that gave them proof it was a chick.
“This is what we all work and hope for,’’ said Stephen Kress, director of Audubon’s Seabird Restoration Program.
The team almost missed the discovery. It takes 120 days for a pair of shearwaters to hatch and raise a chick until it is old enough to fly. If researchers arrived a few days later, they might never have found evidence the chick had hatched on the island.
The birds, with their awfully cute scientific name Puffinus puffinus, nest throughout the eastern North Atlantic, especially in Great Britain.
Related to the albatross, the crow-size birds have a wingspan of nearly 3 feet and are named because they fly low over the water. Great Britain’s studies suggest they may live 56 years and travel more than 5 million miles during their lives.
Beth Daley 
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
