A BUG WITH A GUN?

There was a big article today on Glassy Winged Sharpshooters in the “Local” section of our newspaper. I found the name so peculiar that I just had to read the whole section in order to find out just what this bug was shooting at. I eventually learned the answer, but not in the article.

This particular bug is a nasty one if you own a vineyard. Ten years ago, a grapevine-killing virus threatened to wipe out the vineyards of our Temecula Valley Wine country. Seems the Napa Valley got hit pretty hard too. More than 1,000 acres of Northern California vineyards were lost between 1994 and 2000.

The bug is native to the southeastern US and northeastern Mexico and it has a “favorite food” list of more than 100 plants, including citrus crops and vineyards. What happens is that the sharpshooters suck on the plant and in the process transmit a bacterium that clogs the vine’s water-conducting system. It also lays eggs on the plants and keeps the cycle going. Within three to five years, the vines’ leaves turn brown and the plants wither and die.

University of California Riverside is conducting a study to find ways to combat this destructive disease and the exceptionally pesty pest.

While the entire article was quite interesting, it did not clear up for me the bug’s name. I could figure out on my own why it was called Glassy-Winged (DUH!) But I had to do some further searching to find out what the “Sharpshooter” referred to.

And here’s the end of the story: Both nymphs and adults filter a huge volume of dilute liquid through their digestive system to extract the trace nutrients, and much of the water and carbohydrates are squirted forcibly away from the body in a fine stream of droplets, thus earning them their “sharpshooter” title.

I was a little disappointed. After taking a whole page of reading and another fifteen minutes of checking out sources on the internet, I hoped at least to find that the bug did something like grasping its tail, pulling it around to the front of its body and aiming it at something, like a sharpshooter of the old west. But no. No such drama. Nothing more than what seems like emitting a bit of body fluid out of its back end. That’s not a sharpshooter in my book. I feel misled.