This peculiar, purple object was seen hanging near a campground in the Adirondacks. What is it?
Answer
An emerald ash borer trap.
The emerald ash borer (EAB) was discovered in the town of Randolph, New York, Cattaraugus County, in June. Since then, The New York DEC has been aggressively monitoring the spread of the insect in the state. Approximately 6,000 of these baited traps have been set up statewide. Some have been placed in arcs around the Randolph area, to gauge how far the insect is spreading. Others have been strategically set in high risk areas – most often campgrounds that host out-of-state guests.
The traps are baited with a compound that smells like a damaged ash tree (more effective, suggests research scientist Jerry Carlson, than the smell of a healthy ash tree or a dead ash tree). After a number of different color variations, scientists settled on purple. Carlson says that the color may stimulate a male’s mating instincts, since female beetles have shiny purple abdomens.
The traps were put up in June this year, and will be taken down and checked when the beetles go dormant. There aren’t enough resources to check the traps intermittently, so we won’t know what’s been captured until they’re taken down in the fall.
This week’s contest winner was Charlie Najimy of Savoy MA