What’s been “crawling” in the UW-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab this past year? Find out in this three part series.
The State of the IDL in 2015
Caseload
While it wasn’t exceptionally “buggy” in Wisconsin this past year, 2015 ended up seeing the highest annual caseload ever handled by the UW-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab. The previous annual caseload record belonged to 2013, with 2,207 specimens. In 2015, the lab identified a whopping 2,423 specimens from 71 of the 72 Wisconsin counties. The vast majority of cases, (>94%; 2,287 specimens) originated from within the state of Wisconsin, 93 samples (digital images) came from other U.S. states, and 43 international samples (digital images) were handled by the IDL in 2015*. As expected, the bulk of the submissions came during the warmer months when insects are most active as illustrated below:
Sample Submission
Overall, roughly half of the samples processed by the lab in 2015 consisted of digital images, which is similar to other recent years; the remainder of the cases involved physical specimens or verbal descriptions of the insects. Approximately half of the processed samples were submitted by the general public, over a quarter came from UW-Extension county agents/support staff, and smaller quantities came in from pest control professionals, agricultural producers and consultants, members of the green industry (lawn care, arborists, nursery), medical and public health professionals, and colleagues in academia and government agencies such as the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection.
Sample Identity
In 2015, the Insect Diagnostic Lab’s database was upgraded to include real-time statistics on the identity of specimens submitted to the lab. Overall, >80% of the samples handled by the lab were Hexapods (insects and close relatives, such as springtails), >10% were arachnids (spiders, mites, ticks) and myriapods (centipedes and millipedes), and the remainder of the cases involved other animals (slugs, crustaceans, vertebrates, etc.) or other factors (plant disease, physiological plant stress, and non-living or unidentifiable specimens). Of the insect specimens processed in 2015, 21 different major insect groups (orders) were represented as shown in the chart below. Of these groups, 5 orders in particular made up 92% of the specimens handled by the IDL last year:
- Coleoptera: beetles, such as Japanese beetles and carpet beetles
- Hemiptera: “true Bugs”, such as aphids, and boxelder bugs
- Hymenoptera: ants, bees, wasps, and yellowjackets
- Lepidoptera: moths, butterflies, and their young (caterpillars)
- Diptera: “true flies”, such as house flies and mosquitoes
Interestingly, submissions can vary quite a bit throughout the year as illustrated by the prevalence of caterpillars seen this past spring as described in an earlier blog post.
Other Lab Activities
In addition to providing diagnostic services and pest management advice, another major function of the Insect Diagnostic Lab is to provide insect-related outreach for UW-Extension and the UW-Madison Entomology Department. To that end, IDL staff delivered 105 presentations at workshops, field days, seminar series, and other events and participated in dozens of Extension and outreach events throughout Wisconsin in 2015 (State Fair, Garden Expo, summer children’s programs, etc.). IDL staff also conducted 36 radio, TV, and newspaper interviews in 2015, including 7 (1.5 hour) episodes on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Larry Meiller Show”. Eight Extension factsheets and other publications were authored or co-authored by IDL staff in 2015 and the Insect Diagnostic Lab and associated “Insect ID” website were viewed over 400,000 times in 2015.
Up Next, Part II: Wisconsin’s Top Insect Trends of 2015 (Numbers 10-6)
* In case you’re curious, international cases in 2015 came from 11 different countries on four continents: Mexico, Costa Rica, the United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, Nigeria, Zambia, India, Bhutan, the Philippines, and Japan.