Verbenone reduces landing of the redbay ambrosia beetle,vector of the laurel wilt pathogen,on live standing redbay trees

1. Laurel wilt is a disease that has caused extensive mortality of redbay Persea borbonia in the southeastern U.S.A. The redbay ambrosia beetle Xyleborus glabratus is the vector of the causal agent of laurel wilt, the fungus Raffaelea lauricola.
2. We tested two potential repellents to the redbay ambrosia beetle, verbenone and methyl salicylate (MeSA) in an 8‐month large‐scale experiment conducted in three locations in Florida. In each location, redbay trees were treated with a single or double application of SPLAT (Specialized Pheromone and Lure Application Technology; ISCA Technologies, Riverside, California) verbenone, as well as SPLAT with a 1:2 mix of MeSA and verbenone.
3. The MeSA + verbenone mixes did not reduce beetle captures compared with the control treatment, whereas SPLAT verbenone alone significantly reduced the number of beetles captured on sticky traps placed on redbay trees in the three locations. The reduction of beetle capture was similar regardless of one or two treatments of SPLAT verbenone. The reduction of tree death with the SPLAT verbenone treatment was not statistically significant.
4. The results of the present study suggest that trunk application of verbenone can reduce landing rates of the redbay ambrosia beetle on live redbay trees and shows promise for use in an integrated pest management strategy against laurel wilt.

     

Characterization of the aldose reductase-encoding gene family in rat.

Although the enzyme aldose reductase (AR) is implicated in the development of tissue pathology in diabetes, the exact mechanism of this involvement remains unclear. To better understand the role that expression of the aldose reductase-encoding gene (ALR) may play in diabetic complications, we have begun to analyze the gene and its regulatory regions, and we present here the sequence of four ALR genes in the rat. The putative functional gene is 14.1 kb long, has ten exons which show perfect sequence identity to the rat lens AR RNA sequence, and nine introns with classical splice-site consensus sequences. Potential regulatory elements in the 5'-flanking region of this gene include a TATA box and two CCAAT boxes. Probing rat genomic Southern blots with a fragment from the first intron indicates that there is probably only one copy of this gene in the rat genome. The other three genes are processed pseudogenes which show approx. 90% identity to the rat lens AR RNA sequence, contain no introns, and have poly(A) regions at their 3' ends. Chromosomal localization studies show the presence of ALR genes on chromosomes 3, 4 and 6 in the rat with the putative functional gene mapped on chromosome 4.