![]() ![]() Flint has been trained in emergency situations as a cadaver dog. Feuerbacher has a vested interest in dog welfare and behavior, while Dickinson has a strong background in training dogs for odor detection. He is energetic, playful, and very well-trained, thanks to the efforts of his talented owner and trainer, Sally Dickinson, a doctoral candidate in the School of Animal Sciences and a student of Feuerbacher's.īoth women share an affinity for four-legged animals, especially dogs. ![]() The project, unofficially called the Canine Citizen Science Study, began two years ago in an olfactory lab at Texas Tech and has recently expanded to the East Coast, where Feuerbacher and assistants are asking dog owners to unite and utilize their pets' scent work skills to sniff out spotted lanternfly eggs.įlint is an 8-year-old border collie. Now, researchers in Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are experimenting with a new approach and calling upon dogs in the fight against the spotted lanternfly.Įrica Feuerbacher, an associate professor of applied animal welfare and behavior in the School of Animal Sciences, and Mizuho Nita, a Virginia Cooperative Extension specialist and an associate professor in the School for Plant and Environmental Sciences, have partnered with researchers at Texas Tech University to combat both the spotted lanternfly and the deadly fungal disease powdery mildew with the help of canines and their citizen-scientist counterparts. Stomp, squash, or smash the dastardly bug, they say. Officials in infested states have brainstormed different approaches to stop the spread of this deadly leafhopper. Envision logging trucks traveling back and forth across the country with a few unwelcome pesky passengers braced to the back. ![]() They are often characterized as "hitchhikers" for their ability to move long distances through human-assisted movement. Spotted laternflies, native to mainland China, prey upon 70-plus host plant species, stealing their nutrients with their piercing snouts, called stylets. ![]()
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