Home page of James Skelton
Red-cockaded woodpeckers have had a rough time. They depend on mature, fire-maintained southeastern pine forests to feed and breed. Unfortunately, demand for timber and a really effective anti-fire campaign have reduced their once bountiful numbers to a few isolated relic populations. Conflicts between private landowner interests and enforced endangered species management has made things complicated.…
Introduced bark and ambrosia beetles can be a real problem when they bring fungal symbionts that are also plant pathogens (think Dutch Elm Disease, Laural Wilt, etc). Native trees just don’t have the co-evolutionary history to defend themselves against such novel pathogens. That’s why we need to be able to quickly and accurately identify the…
The amazing mycangium – the little pouche that ambrosia beetles use to carry living fungi while they disperse. In this study, we describe the ontogeny of the Xylosandrus beetle mycangium and its fungal load over the beetle’s life cycle, in the wild and in our lab colonies. The beetles keep the timing of fungal proliferation tight, only…