A Multidisciplinary Approach to Reconstruction of a Boll Weevil Re-invasion

The boll weevil, Anthonomus grandis, is an invasive insect pest that has been successfully eradicated from most of the U.S.A.  During August 2007, shortly after Tropical Storm Erin hit Texas, boll weevils re-invaded the Southern Rolling Plains eradication zone.   Determining the origin of immigrant insects is challenging, but various techniques have been used individually to determine insect dispersal, migration, and origins.  Because a management response to the re-invasion of weevils often depends on where the weevils are thought to have originated, it was important to develop a multidisciplinary approach that would provide a more robust and fine-tuned conclusion than a single technique could provide.  Pollen analysis fingerprinting, atmospheric dispersion modeling, and genetic population assignment analyses based on microsatellite DNA markers were used to identify the probable origin of weevils captured in pheromone traps.  Integrated results of the pollen fingerprinting, atmospheric trajectory analysis and genetic profiling strongly implicated the Winter Garden district near Uvalde, TX, as the source of immigrant weevils.   This multidisciplinary approach is widely applicable to other invasive and quarantine pests.