Fall armyworm was unstoppable. Then it came to Australia

March 27, 2025 6:15 PM

Fall armyworm was unstoppable. Then it came to Australia. The insect said to threaten the food security of 600 million people globally may have met its match in the form of several native Australian fungi and bacteria. New biological control methods targeting fall armyworm have been found by Queensland's DPI and the CSIRO after years of research. The naturally-occurring biocontrols act better than insecticides with some killing the pest within 24 hours.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (9 comments total)

Wow, that is super cool and super encouraging!

YAY SCIENCE!

I kind of wish they would have explained a bit about WHY it's so unlikely that the worms will develop a resistance, but to be honest it would probably go over my head anyway, heh.

Thanks so much for posting this, chariot pulled by cassowaries! This is great news, and I appreciate you sharing it here.
posted by kristi at 7:00 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]

Now that's the way to do it!! Mother Nature for the win.
posted by BlueHorse at 7:31 PM on March 27 [1 favorite]

Australia, the world's appendix
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 8:18 PM on March 27 [8 favorites]

COOL! So... how do we start doing this with other invasive species?
posted by heeven at 8:28 PM on March 27

Now picturing a bunch of fall armyworms sitting around a PS5 playing The Last of Us.
posted by rory at 2:58 AM on March 28

My respect/terror of the Australian ecosystem is evolving into awe
posted by otherchaz at 8:52 AM on March 28

remember when "there's an app for that" was a thing

for Australia, it's "there's a venomous lifeform for that"
posted by ginger.beef at 10:42 AM on March 28 [3 favorites]

I work at a laboratory where we evaluate biological control agents for invasive species, and I am astounded at this. Normally, when you have an invasive species, you are fighting something that has traveled to a new area where it has no natural enemies. You travel to the center of diversification for the invasive species, where you hope to collect a natural antagonist that has had millions of years of coevolution to have come up with ways to limit the pathogen. You then collect that antagonist and release it in the new area being invaded. And hope that it works like it works in the original center of diversification.

This is completely different: they are saying the insect has enemies here that have NO history of coevolution with it.
posted by acrasis at 3:56 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

There's two stories mashed into one here. Nomuraea rileyi aka Metarhizium rileyi occurs around the world and is known to be a good biological control for this pest. It seems like one Australian group is getting close to producing a commercial product based on it.

Here's a study from China

A separate group is studying local Australian fungi which seem to work faster but they're much earlier in the research stage.
posted by onya at 12:06 PM on March 30