Photos from the WFIWC Archives:
Equipment and Methodology

In 1960, during field studies of the Douglas-fir beetle in Idaho, something ... now lost from memory ... caused me to test the attraction of the beetle to fresh-cut stem sections (slabs) of Douglas-fir attached to live trees (LeRoy Kline in photo). Three treatments were replicated 5 times along the South Fork of the Salmon River, Payette N.F. The treatments were: 1. unmated female confined in bark, 2. male and female in bark, and 3. un-infested section. The sections were then enclosed in wire mesh screen. After the flight period, trees were felled to determine infested lengths and related data.

One replicate was not attacked due apparently to its location away from a beetle source and in an exposed environment not conducive to attack (beetles are negatively photo-tactic after emergence). Of the other replicates, treatments 1 and 2 were attacked (4 out of 4 each); treatment 3 was attacked 2 out of 4. This was just one of those curiosity studies that a young guy full of ... vinegar did, not suspecting he would be daft enough to bring it up 48 years later. I would do it a bit differently now and pursue the results but I was involved with other venues. The result appeared in the Intermountain Forest Experiment Station annual report (U.S. Forest Service 1960) as cited in Rudinsky et al 1972 (this later study will be featured separately). Others (McMullen & Atkins in B.C., Canada; Rudinsky in Oregon) also studied this beetle during the early 1960s and, with the discovery of the first scolytid pheromone in 1966 by California researchers (Ips paraconfusus), similar discoveries relating to the Douglas-fir beetle followed (Rudinsky and Vite and associates). I got on board in 1970 with field testing the pheromones that they were discovering, as I plan to feature separately. -- Malcolm M. Furniss

Reference cited:
Rudinsky, J. A., M. M. Furniss, L. N. Kline, and R. F. Schmitz. 1972. Attraction and repression of Dendroctonus pseudotsugae (Coleoptera: Scolytidae) by three synthetic pheromones in traps in Oregon and Idaho. Can. Entomol. 104:815-822.

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