Hand Full of Beetles

Walter Leal of the University of California, Davis, catches Japanese beetles cascading from a container.  Leal studies insect pheromones as part of an effort to create better pest control approaches.  In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Leal and his colleagues described how they have isolated, identified, cloned and expressed a pheromone-degrading enzyme in the Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica), a discovery that could help prevent male Japanese beetles from detecting the sex pheromones produced by females, preventing mating and potentially lowering reproduction.

 
Credit: Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey