Evolving symbioses between insects and fungi that kill trees in Canada: New threats associated with invasive organisms

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Ramsfeld, Tod

• Symbiotic relationships between insects and fungi are known to cause tree mortality
  either through direct damage by larval feeding that can be facilitated by symbiotic fungi, or through
  insects vectoring pathogens directly to healthy trees. Within their native ranges, the impacts of many
  insect-fungus symbioses are restricted to weakened and declining trees; however, within the last
  century tree mortality caused by globally invasive insect–fungus associations has had a devastating
  impact on trees in both urban and natural forest ecosystems. Unfortunately, Canadian forests have been
  seriously affected by invasive organisms and an emerging threat is the expansion of a native bark beetle
  into the boreal forest of Alberta. This paper reviews the symbiotic relationships between selected
  invasive insects and pathogens that cause tree mortality within the urban and forested landscapes of
  Canada; it uses these case studies to illustrate potentially damaging new evolutionary trajectories.

• Date created

  2016-01-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Terrestrial ecology

• Type of Item

  Article (Draft / Submitted)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-z072-gb30

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International