Since 2023, the village of Kloten north of Zurich is not only famous for the Zurich Airport and for having a great ice hockey team, but also for harboring the first Popillia population in Europe north of the Alps. In summer and autumn of 2023, huge efforts were made to eradicate this population, including insecticide sprays, the erection of LLINs-t...
We are beyond excited to share developmental stage photos of the Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica) directly from our laboratory experiment. The Japanese beetle undergoes three larval stages, which means that the larvae do not grow steadily but develop three times until they pupate and finally emerge as adult beetles. We ...
From October 18–20, 2023, members of the IPM Popillia consortium came together in Heraklion, Greece, for the yearly General Assembly of the IPM Popillia project. The event provided the possibility of gaining insight into and learning about the progress and developments made in the different interdisciplinary work packages of the project. At the sam...
Regulatory reporting of invasive alien species or controlled pests such as the Japanese beetle to national authorities can be challenging for citizens. Therefore, in the IPM Popillia Horizon 2020 project, the "Automated Reporting System" (ARS) was developed by SPOTTERON for the IPM Popillia Citizen Science App to process automated reports and...
In collaboration with colleagues from CREA (Florence), we have treated popillias with three experimental control protocols that appear as promising candidates in their hands. Treated popillias have been snap frozen for molecular analysis. In the next months we will evaluate the effects of different treatments in terms of gene expression. With these...
One of the beautiful things in developing #CitizenScience Apps on @SPOTTERON for research projects is that we always learn something new. In every App project, making inquiries about the topic, scope, and science is crucial for designing the data structure input dialogue and the look & feel of a new Citizen Science App on the platform. Integrat...
