By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason
Editors note: Great Lakes SmackDown! Terrestrial Terror is an ongoing Great Lakes Echo series.
Teamwork helped the Chinese and Japanese Mystery Snails and the beech scale defeat Round 1 terrors. So what will happen when the odds are evened in the next round?
How did the giant stinky snail tag team fair against the Bark Butcher and his trusty fungal side-sick?
It was a tough call, but the beech scale wins. Three-fourths of the pollsters put their money on the bug and fungus duo. But it didn’t do well in the bracket; 31 percent favored the mystery snails, compared with 19 percent who had faith in the Butcher.
The mystery snails are truly aquatic wildcards.
They may have filled an empty niche for larger gastropods in North America, said Robert Dillon, South Carolina College of Charleston associate professor of biology and snail scientist.
Aside from leaving a trail of stench along beaches, it’s hard to measure their impact against other aquatic species.
“Mystery snails, they don’t show much impact because they are strikingly different,” Dillon said.
But beeches kill.
“The beech bark disease complex – it can take away your trees pretty quick,” said Andrea Diss-Torrance of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
The invasive beech scale feeds on tree sap, which paves the way for destructive fungi to invade unsuspecting trees. The resulting condition is referred to as the Beech Bark Disease.
It’s a growing problem in Great Lakes states because beech trees are a mast crop; they produce a lot of nuts and are a food source for animals, Diss-Torrance said. It’s especially devastating in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where beech trees are one of the region’s major mast crops.
Diseased beech trees are dangerous to people because of their weakened state, he said.
Make it the Bark Butcher for the win.