{"id":7552,"date":"2016-06-29T18:16:26","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T22:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=7552"},"modified":"2016-06-29T18:16:26","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T22:16:26","slug":"mild-winter-causes-major-caterpillar-problems-in-northeast-forests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2016\/06\/mild-winter-causes-major-caterpillar-problems-in-northeast-forests\/","title":{"rendered":"Mild winter causes major caterpillar problems in Northeast forests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <em>Capital Weather Gang<\/em> posted a very interesting story this week about one impact of the mild winter on forests in New England. \u00a0The lack of really cold conditions (due in part to the strong El Ni\u00f1o that just ended) allowed millions of gypsy moth eggs to survive. \u00a0When spring arrived, they hatched and infested vast areas of the region.<\/p>\n<p>One interesting weather-related fact is that where they had more rain in spring, the number of moths is less because the rain helped improve the\u00a0growth of a certain kind of fungus \u2014\u00a0<em>entomophaga maimaiga<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 that serves as a natural \u201cpredator\u201d for the gypsy moth caterpillar. \u00a0The story indicates that the lines between areas with rain and those with little rain show stark differences in tree condition and number of caterpillars seen.<\/p>\n<p>You can read the story <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/capital-weather-gang\/wp\/2016\/06\/28\/millions-of-caterpillars-are-totally-decimating-the-trees-in-new-england\/?wpisrc=nl_rainbow&amp;wpmm=1\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7553\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7553\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2016\/06\/Gypsy_Moth_damage_Hapers_Ferry.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-7553\" src=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2016\/06\/Gypsy_Moth_damage_Hapers_Ferry-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Source: Jeffrey A. Mai, U.S. Forest Service via Commons Wikimedia\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2016\/06\/Gypsy_Moth_damage_Hapers_Ferry-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2016\/06\/Gypsy_Moth_damage_Hapers_Ferry-207x138.jpg 207w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2016\/06\/Gypsy_Moth_damage_Hapers_Ferry.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7553\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Jeffrey A. Mai, U.S. Forest Service via Commons Wikimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Capital Weather Gang posted a very interesting story this week about one impact of the mild winter on forests in New England. \u00a0The lack of really cold conditions (due in part to the strong El Ni\u00f1o that just ended) allowed millions of gypsy moth eggs to survive. \u00a0When spring arrived, they hatched and infested [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":7553,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-and-ag-in-the-news","category-forests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7554,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7552\/revisions\/7554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}