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The 'boll weevil' (''Anthonomus grandis'') is a beetle measuring an average length of six millimeters (¼ inch), which feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Thought to be native to Central America, it migrated into the US from Mexico in the late 19th century and had infested all US cotton-growing areas by the 1920s, devastating the industry. During the late 20th century it became a serious pest in South America as well. Since 1978, the Boll Weevil Eradication Program in the US has allowed full-scale cultivation to resume in many regions.

Contents

Life cycle

Infestation

Control

Popular music

Trivia

References

In-line

External

External links

Life cycle

Adult weevils overwinter in well-drained areas in or near cotton fields after diapause. They emerge and enter cotton fields from early spring through midsummer, with peak emergence in late spring, and feed on immature cotton bolls. The female lays about 200 eggs over a 10-12 day period. The oviposition leaves wounds on the exterior of the flower bud. The eggs hatch in three to five days. The larvae feed within the cotton squares for eight to ten days, then pupate. The pupal stage lasts five to seven days. The life cycle from egg to adult spans about three weeks during the summer. Under optimal conditions there may be eight to 10 generations per season.
Boll weevils will begin to die at temperatures at or below 23 degrees Fahrenheit, at times their urine freezes when they die. Research at the University of Missouri indicates they cannot survive more than an hour at 5 degrees Fahrenheit. The insulation offered by leaf litter, crop residues, and snow may enable the beetle to survive when air temperatures drop to these levels.
Other limitations on boll weevil populations include extreme heat and drought. Its natural predators include fire ants, insects, spiders, birds, and a parasitic wasp, ''Catolaccus grandis''. The insects at times engage in what seems to be almost suicidal behavior by emerging from diapause before cotton buds are available.

Infestation

The insect crossed the Rio Grande near Brownsville, Texas to enter the United States from Mexico in 1892 and reached southeastern Alabama in 1915. By the mid 1920s it had entered all cotton growing regions in the US, travelling 40 to 160 miles per year. It remains the most destructive cotton pest in North America. Mississippi State University has estimated that since the boll weevil entered the United States it has cost US cotton producers about $13 billion, and in recent times about $300 million per year.^[1]
The boll weevil contributed to the economic woes of Southern farmers during the 1920s, a situation exacerbated by the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The Library of Congress American Memory Project contains a number of oral history materials on the boll weevil's impact.^[2] In one of the project's features, a 1939 interview for the Federal Writers' Project, South Carolina native Mose Austin recalled that his employer was adamant. "He don't want nothin' but cotton planted on de place; dat he in debt and hafter raise cotton to git de money to pay wid." Austin let out a long guffaw before recounting, "De boll weevil come...and, bless yo' life, dat bug sho' romped on things dat fall." Austin remembered that the following spring, his employer insisted on planting cotton in spite of warnings from his wife, his employees, and government agricultural experts:
:''De cotton come up and started to growin', and, suh, befo' de middle of May I looks down one day and sees de boll weevil settin' up dere in de top of dem little cotton stalks waitin' for de squares to fo'm. So all dat gewano us hauled and put down in 1922 made nuttin' but a crop of boll weevils.'' ^[3]
The next year, Austin's employer tried the same ill-fated experiment. Ultimately, the man lost his farm and moved with his disgruntled wife to California.
The boll weevil infestation has, however, been credited with bringing about economic diversification in the southern US, including the expansion of peanut cropping. The citizens of Enterprise, Alabama erected the Boll Weevil Monument in 1919, perceiving that their economy had been overly dependent on cotton, and that mixed farming and manufacturing were better alternatives.
The boll weevil appeared in Venezuela in 1949 and in Colombia in 1950. The Amazon Rainforest was thought to present a barrier to its further spread, but it was detected in Brazil in 1983, and it is estimated that about 90% of the cotton farms in Brazil are now infested. During the 1990s the weevil spread to Paraguay and Argentina. The International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) has proposed a control program similar to that used in the US.^[4]

Control

Following World War II the development of new pesticides such as DDT enabled US farmers to again grow cotton as an economic crop, but at great expense and environmental risk. In 1978 a test was conducted in North Carolina to determine feasibility of eradicating the weevil from the growing areas. Based on the success of this, area-wide programs were begun in the 1980s to eradicate the insect from whole regions. These are based on cooperative effort by all growers together with the assistance of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The program has been successful in eradicating weevils from Virginia and the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, south Alabama, California, and Arizona. Efforts are ongoing to eradicate the weevil from the rest of the United States. Continued success is also based on prohibition of unauthorized cotton growing, outside of the program, and constant monitoring for any recurring outbreaks.
Entomologists at Texas A&M have pointed to the spread of fire ants as a factor in the weevil's population decline.^[5]
Other avenues of control that have been explored include weevil-resistant strains of cotton,
^[6] the parasitic wasp ''Catolaccus grandis'', the fungus ''Beauveria bassiana'', ^[7] and the ''Chilo iridescent'' virus. Genetically engineered Bt cotton is not protected from the boll weevil. ^[8]

Popular music

Boll weevils are featured prominently in dozens of blues, country, folk, and rock songs:

★ Tex Ritter recorded a song called "Boll Weevil" which was later covered by modern alternative band, The White Stripes.

★ The band The Presidents of the United States of America recorded a song called Boll Weevil on their 1995 album The Presidents of the United States of America.

★ The band Indian Ocean recorded a song called Boll Weevil about tribal peoples in India reacting to harassment by officials.

★ Buster Ezell performed a song called The Boll Weevil twice during the Fort Valley State College Folk Festival of 1941.

★ Folk/Blues musician Huddie Ledbetter (aka Leadbelly) wrote a song known as The Boll Weevil, or alternatively, De Ballet of De Boll Weevil.This song has also been covered by the Detroit band The White Stripes at numerous concerts.

★ Shocking Blue's 1969 album At Home features a song named Boll Weevil.

★ Brook Benton made the insect a popular epithet through his album "The Boll Weevil Song And 11 Other Great Hits". Here the reference to the boll weevil becomes a person looking for home or another person for subsistence.

★ Elvis Presley made a reference to a boll weevil in his song “Little Sister.”

★ Tina Turner scornfully described the subject of the song "Funkier Than a Mosquito's Tweeter" (later recorded by both Nina Simone and Nikka Costa) as having "a mouth like a herd of boll weevils."

★ Woody Guthrie sang "Boll Weevil Song" in a recording session for Alan Lomax on March 21, 1940.

★ John Koerner (aka Spider John) covered the song Boll Weevil on his album Raised by Humans.

★ Charley Patton recorded "Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues".

★ The North Mississippi Allstars recorded "Mississippi Boll Weevil" on their 2006 album Electric Blue Watermelon.

★ The rock band Clutch made a reference to a boll weevil in the song "Rock n' Roll Outlaw", on their album ''Clutch''.

★ Tom Lehrer's song "I Wanna Go Back to Dixie" refers to the Deep South as ''"The land of the boll weevil/Where the laws are medieval"''.

★ Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane wrote the song "Imagine" for the 1954 film Athena. In this song, Debbie Reynolds sings to Vic Damone, "Imagine you're a weevil - an old boll weevil, suppose a field of cotton is me, if you came along and settled down in it... fetch the DDT."

Trivia

★ Between 1996 and 2000, the minor league baseball team in Kannapolis, North Carolina was called the Piedmont Boll Weevils, a nod to the city's heritage as a textile mill town.

★ A restaurant chain in San Diego is called "The Boll Weevil".

★ The University of Arkansas at Monticello's sports teams are known as the Boll Weevils.

★ A daily passenger train on the Seaboard Air Line Railroad in the 1930s and 1940s along the Carolina coast was known as "The Boll Weevil Express."

★ The Secret Order of Boll Weevils is a group of merrymen associated with Carnival Memphis.

★ The Insecticon Bombshell is a stylized robotic boll weevil.

References

In-line

1. Economic impacts of the boll weevil
2. The American Memory Project - Boll weevils
3. "Always Agin It" Place Chapin, South Carolina, John L. Dove, interviewer, January 24, 1939. American Life Histories, 1936–1940
4. Integrated Pest Management Of The Cotton Boll Weevil In Argentina, Brazil, And Paraguay
5. Fire ant predation on the boll weevil
6. Weevil-resistant strains of cotton
7. Biological controls of the boll weevil
8. Bt susceptibility of insect species

External

★ Boll weevil life cycle

★ Boll weevil biology

External links

★ Today in History: December 11, "Boll Weevil Honored"

★ Texas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation

★ Arkansas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation

★ Alabama Tourism Board

★ Boll Weevil in Georgia

★ ''Catolaccus grandis'' is an ectoparasitoid of the boll weevil

★ A 1984 paper on the effect of a parasitic wasp on the boll weevil