Japanese beetles threatened by mysterious tick plague

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http://www.enn.com/news/2003-02-25/s_2786.asp

 

Japanese beetles threatened by mysterious tick plague

 

Tuesday, February 25, 2003

By Kenji Hall, Associated Press

 

TOKYO — When Koichi Goka heard rumors about the

mysterious deaths three years ago, he started snooping

around. What he found has put government officials on

alert against a new plague, one that causes the limbs

of its victims to rot and fall off.

 

The sick aren't filling hospitals; this plague is

restricted to beetles. But in a country where it is

not uncommon for collectors to spend thousands of

dollars on a pet bug, Goka's discovery has become

national news.

 

" I was stunned, " said Goka, a biodiversity researcher

at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in

Tsukuba city, just north of Tokyo. " The way they died

was very different from anything I had studied

before. "

 

The culprit turned out to be a large tick never before

seen in Japan. The amber-colored parasites, about 0.08

of an inch long, were found living in the joints and

bellies of their beetle hosts and carrying deadly

bacteria.

 

Goka said the tick is about 10 times the size of the

ones that are most familiar here, the kind that

inhabit tatami mats in Japanese homes. He said it

doesn't appear to be dangerous to people but poses a

serious threat to the 50 known species of indigenous

beetles.

 

Several months ago, he published a warning in the

major newsletters of the bug research and collecting

industry. " We have only tested beetles from Tokyo. We

still don't know where the ticks are from or how far

they may have spread, " he said.

 

Japan's penchant for big and exotic beetles is likely

to blame. The unidentified tick doesn't appear to be

native to this country, and Goka believes collectors

dealing in the lucrative black market in insects may

have unwittingly imported it along with their bugs.

 

Beetle-collecting is a popular pastime in Japan.

Department stores sell them, and children keep them as

pets. Hardcore collectors dish out exorbitant sums for

rare species and often hunt for wild beetles in

Japan's forests or on expeditions to South Asia and

Southeast Asia. In recent years, many of the most

popular and highly prized beetles have come from that

region. For example, the Dorcus antaeus, native to

India, Nepal, Vietnam, and Malaysia, can sell for up

to US$3,330.

 

Experts say that since 1999, when Tokyo eased import

restrictions on animals potentially harmful to crops,

the number of foreign species has risen sharply.

Collectors, scientists, and environmental groups say

Japan must step up controls or risk introducing new

species and diseases that could allow foreign species

to become dominant and destroy the country's

ecological diversity.

 

" This kind of tick invasion is especially dangerous

because it is unpredictable. It can wipe out an entire

species or spread and infect several different

species, including plants, " said Izumi Washitani, a

Tokyo University professor who heads the Ecological

Society of Japan's panel promoting tighter animal

import laws. " An island nation such as Japan has an

ecology that can be upset very easily and very

significantly by foreign species, " Washitani said.

 

Fumiaki Uragami, editor in chief of Stag Beetle

Magazine, said stores and Internet sites specializing

in beetles are now doing a brisk trade in imported

species and crossbreeds. " The fear is that they will

lead to the disappearance of the native species, "

Uragami said.

 

Last year, collectors imported about 682,800 beetles,

including 318,700 rhinoceros beetles and 364,100 stag

beetles, said Shoko Kameoka, an official with Traffic

East Asia-Japan, a Tokyo-based wildlife trade

watchdog. She said the government has no system to

track what happened to the 96 beetle species from 25

countries that entered Japan during the past year.

 

Not all beetles are susceptible to the new tick

plague. Goka said experiments on several indigenous

species show the tick targets the rhinoceros beetle,

Allomyrina septentrionalis, and stag beetle, Dorcus

titanus. It can kill them both in less than a month,

he said.

 

Tomoyuki Nozuka, an employee at Scissors World, a

beetle shop in Tokyo, said talk of new plagues

surfaces so often that it rarely affects prices or

hurts sales. " Mostly we hear about people finding the

egg or larvae or chrysalis of a tick or some other

parasite latched onto their beetles, " he said. " But in

most cases they can be washed off with water without

harming the beetle. "

 

Japan's Environment Ministry has formed a task force

to devise a plan to crack down on the invasion of all

types of foreign animal species. Ministry official

Ichii Ishiyama said it could be another year before

details of the plan are fleshed out, however. " Until

the government enforces tighter controls, " Goka said,

" we may continue to see more of these kinds of cases. "

 

Source: Associated Press

 

 

 

 

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