The discovery of specimens of Ormiscodes amphimone, which in the south of Chile constitute a real plague, activated the alarm among local researchers. UCM academic Antonio Cabrera will study the insect with support from CONAF.
Known as cuncunas espinales, because of their spiky body, the small Ormiscodes amphimone were discovered by accident in Maule.
«As we were doing research as part of another project, we saw that each year there were more and more cuncunas defoliating the hualo oaks. Then we realized that it was the same insect that was affecting the Lenga trees in the south,» said Antonio Cabrera, Ph.D. in Plant Production Sciences, a member of UCM’s Center for Research and Advanced Studies of Maule (CIEAM).
The unwanted visitor was none other than a defoliating caterpillar, which in 2019 starred in one of the largest insect outbreaks in the Southern Hemisphere. In Coyhaique alone, the cuncuna affected more than 31 thousand hectares of Lenga, also called the oak of Tierra del Fuego.
Preventing its proliferation is the objective of the project awarded to Cabrera by CONAF’s Native Forest Research Fund.
«Initially, we will try to quantify the damage and later we will propose trapping methods. There are two types of traps; the trapping traps have an ultraviolet light that attracts the moths so that they fall into a funnel, where they are trapped. There are also sexual confusion traps, which emit pheromones and make the male not find the female; if they do not find each other, they do not reproduce and, therefore, do not proliferate,» added the scientist.
A tree without heirs
Another initiative that received resources from the contest administered by the National Forestry Corporation also seeks to rescue a native tree. The Pitao, also known as «Canelillo», is in danger of extinction due to forest fires, deforestation, fragmentation of the landscape and changes in land use, among other factors.
The specimens that have survived are distributed between Maule and Araucanía.
«It is important to study the Pitao since it is an endemic tree, that is, it grows in this geographical area and nowhere else in Chile or the world. It is also the only species in the Pitabia genus and is, therefore, the only representative of an evolutionary line,» said the principal investigator of the project, Diego Muñoz, PhD in Plant Sciences.
The academic from UCM’s Faculty of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences pointed out that the eventual disappearance of the Pitao would generate an imbalance.
«The species are not isolated. There are other species associated with the pitao, such as, for example, an insect that does not have a name yet, but that exists and lives in its leaf. If we lose the pitao, we are going to lose at least one insect,» he said.
Both Cabrera and Muñoz presented their proposals at a seminar led by CONAF’s regional director, María Isabel Florido, who praised the initiatives.
«These are the projects that received the highest scores in the conservation and restoration areas. We are confident that with their execution and achievement of results we will be able to advance in the management and conservation of Mediterranean forests both in our region and in the entire central zone of the country, and expand knowledge about the native forest,» he emphasized.
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