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Old November 4, 2011   #5
semi_lucid
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Texas, zone 6b
Posts: 100
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lakelady

Thanks for the suggestion.

Mater

I haven't cooked any of it up yet, but I'm still thinking about it.

Part of what got me thinking about it was reading about Pickleworms. They are killed by freezing temps, so they die back to southern Florida every year. Then in the summer, they spread north as far as Michigan.

If I remember correctly, each female can lay 450 eggs, and there can be four generations in a summer. So 450 x 450 x 450 x 450 = 41,006,250,000. (That would be if they had a 100% survival rate.)

So if all of that is true, and I don't know if it is, then one Florida female could have 41 billion descendants by the end of summer. It seems to me that the time to control Pickleworms is in the bottle neck of the Florida peninsula. They are attracted to the scent of squash plants, so if you could offer people in Florida FREE scented sticky traps. maybe you could control that plague.

Ironically, I don't get Pickleworms where I'm at.

I'm planning on trying to cook some glue sometime in the next few months. My main target would be Squash bugs and Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs, so I would need to make a good quality glue.

Regards.
John

Edit. If half those eggs were male, then it would be 225 x 225 x 225 x 255 = 2,562,890,625 So only 2.5 billion descendants.

Last edited by semi_lucid; November 4, 2011 at 06:57 PM.
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