High school students are raising an army of beetles to combat the growth of an invasive twining vine that is taking over parks and yards in Florida.
Working at the TERRA Environmental Institute in Miami, the students are working with Lilioceris cheni or Lili beetles and plan to release the insects into a park later this year, The Associated Press reported.
The beetle lab, which started in late 2013, has been funded with a $30,000 grant from the State Farm Youth Advisory Board to the Parks Foundation of Miami-Dade. The funding paid for lab equipment, and six high school seniors were trained by the USDA earlier this year to develop the lab and work with the starter beetles.
Intended to be a cost-efficient, chemical-free method of fighting the plant, the Lili beetles will be released in a South Florida park this year to eat the invasive Air Potato twining vine, which chokes out vegetation native to the area. It has been detected in almost every Florida county as well as some nearby states.
Beetles released in 2011 ate the vine but left other plants alone.
Working with this lab of Lili beetles, which will likely be released to devour the vine this summer, means giving them as natural an environment as possible to encourage them to mate.
"The male and female has to get together, because they will be feeding, flying around happy. So you have to give them space ... and time," Dr. Min Rayamajhi, a plant pathologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture who worked with the students, told the AP.
According to Rayamajhi, a nonnative bug is needed to eat a nonnative plant. The Air Potato vine can grow several inches a day, climbing on other vegetation with the result that "anything underneath it kills because it smothers everything," Rayamajhi told the AP.
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