Galerucella Beetle Rearing Facility - Just in time for spring!

Happy spring equinox! Over the past few days, Amber at Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and Katrina, a Student Conservation Association fellow working with the Refuge and the National Park Service, set up our Galerucella beetle rearing facility.  The pools are housed at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge visitor center.

Creating the beetle rearing facility is a multi-step process. First, we must go find existing purple loosestrife plants in the wild that are large enough to survive being transplanted. After those plants are dug up, they are brought back to the facility location.

After we have all of the root balls back to the facility site, we have to wash them to remove all soil, debris, and roots from other plants. We do this because we want to grow the purple loosestrife and raise the beetles in as controlled an environment as possible.

We plant the loosestrife roots balls in large pots within children's wading pools. We will fill the pools part way with water to simulate the loosestrife's natural wetland environment.

Even though purple loosestrife is an invasive species, we want our samples to grow well while they are in the pots. To encourage their growth, we add fertilizer to each pot.

After all of our plants are potted, this is what they look like! It may not look like much, but over the next several weeks the plants should sprout and grow leaves. We will carefully monitor their progress and growing conditions, trying to make them feel right at home!  By May, our cultivated loosestrife plants should be large enough to feed our beetles.