Copepods make tire-heaps copacetic.Copepods make tire-heaps copacetic co·pa·cet·ic or co·pa·set·ic adj. Very satisfactory or acceptable; fine: "You had to be a good judge of what a man was like, and the English was copacetic" John O'Hara. Researchers express optimism about a new way of killing Aedes albopictus Noun 1. Aedes albopictus - striped native of Japan thriving in southwestern and midwestern United States and spreading to the Caribbean; potential carrier of serious diseases Asian tiger mosquito , the Asian mosquito that recently invaded the United States (see story, page 309). Gerald G. Marten marten, name for carnivorous, largely arboreal mammals (genus Martes) of the weasel family, widely distributed in North America, Europe, and central Asia. Martens are larger, heavier-bodied animals than weasels, with thick fur and bushy tails. of the New Orleans Mosquito Control Board reports that copepods -- millimeter-long crustaceans that munch voraciously on mosquito larvae--work well as biological controls in the discarded tires where Ae. albopictus breeds. Marten and his colleagues used a backpack sprayer to deposit 100 to 200 of the aquaculture-raised copepods into individual water-filled tires in used-tire dumps. Each tiny creature killed up to 100 mosquito larvae Larvae, in Roman religion Larvae: see lemures. per day, eventually eliminating 99.9 percent of the pests, he says. Marten has yet to test the system on a larger scale, but he expresses confidence that the method carries little risk of adverse environmental impact. "The [copepod copepod: see crustacean. copepod Any of the 10,000 known species of crustaceans in the subclass Copepoda. Copepods are widely distributed and ecologically important, serving as food for many species of fish. ] species we're using are already everywhere, in millions of puddles and ponds throughout North America," he says. "We're just trying to get them into a few places where they don't normally live." |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion