History of the Colorado beetle

[Sasha]

Does anibody know where he ferst appeared Colorado beetle. Very little information on there is topic,and a I don't know which book is better. Thanks a lot for you help

[John Cuthber]

Since it seems to eat potatoes I presume it evolved in the same area that they did ,which would be South America.

[overtone]

http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/creatures/veg/leaf/potato_beetles.htm

 

It's not reported from South America as a native insect, and it did not spread with the potato around the world from South America right away - although that spread as happened, and further spread is now feared, (any such beetles spotted in, say, Ireland or England, are treated as emergencies). Its home range before recent spreading appears to be some areas of Mexico, and parts of Colorado (where it was first noticed) - north and south along the east foothills off the Rockies, with a gap for the desert areas in the American southwest.

 

It eats various Solonaceae - http://www.britannica.com/plant/Solanaceae - not just potatoes. There are several plants of this family native and wild in Colorado etc. These plants have heavy chemical defenses, which the domestic potato has been bred to have less of - possibly making it candy for the beetle, worth specializing in and seeking out, as soon as any were planted in its range. It can fly.

 

The beetle was always well adapted to overcoming chemical defenses and poisons, which may explain its remarkable ability to quickly develop resistance to insecticides. It's a menace, if you like potatoes.

 

It was discovered to Western science, along with a vastly disproportionate share of the rest of the North American biota, by Thomas Nuttal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nuttall ThomasNuttal was possibly the original absent-minded professor, the type specimen, and there are a lot good stories about him *, but his uncanny ability to notice things shows up in stuff like this - the guy was a botanist by training, the year was 1811 (not a potato in sight in Colorado), there were lots of different kinds of beetles around that Nuttal did not collect, and he neither officially described or named the thing - just recorded his observation. The plague hit forty years later.

 

*The Wiki account has him leaving exploration parties and visiting Red tribes and returning with other exploration parties - what it leaves out is that Nuttal was always getting lost, wandering in the wilderness without food he never learned to shoot or fire he never learned to make, until he encountered some red people and - instead of being killed for his gear and trespass threat or held for ransom as would have happened to almost anyone else - was returned to the nearest group of white people for caretaking, with the best wishes of his captors. And there's the story of him standing tall and defiant among his exploration party confronting the northern Cheyenne light cavalry in a hostile mood, holding a rifle whose barrel was packed with seeds he had collected and needed to keep dry. And the story of Richard Henry Dana's meeting him first at Harvard, where Dana was a student about to leave on his grand sailing adventure and Nuttal was a professor living in a second floor room accessible only by ladder through a trap door, the ladder often removed for privacy, and then many months later, after sailing around Cape Horn and the adventure of his life, landing on a beach near the mouth of the Columbia River and seeing that same batty and harmless professor of botany wading in the surf on the wild Pacific coast collecting mussels and seaweed species and beach flora.

http://www.netartsbaytoday.org/html/clams_.html

Edited April 11, 2016 by overtone