TRIUMPH OF RESEARCH

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3305, 4 June 1931, Page 5

TRIUMPH OF RESEARCH

The brilliant scientific research that led to the conquest of the Levuana moth in Fiji has been recorded in a publication by the Imperial Bureau of Entomology for the Government of Fiji. About 30,000 tons of copra are produced annually in Fiji, and anything that affects the industry is at once reflected in the prosperity of the islands. About ten years ago the caterpillar of a moth known to entomologists as Levuana iridescens, which feeds on the leaves of the cocoa palm, had broken the natural bounds which had confined it for ages to the island of Yiti Levu, and had begun its ravages on neighbouring coprai-producing islands. By 1924 it had become such a menace that the value of cocoanut estates had shrunk perceptibly. The problem was eventually entrusted to three qualified entomologists—Dr J. D. Hothill and his assistants, Messrs T. H. C. Taylor and R. W. Paine. After investigating various lines of attack upon the pest, they sought to establish control of the moth by a parasite. • By chance, one of the parasite hunters came upon a local plague of a moth, Artona, in the Malay States. This moth is related to the destructive Levuana of the Fiji Islands and, as it harbours a parasite, there was a chance that this parasite might regard the Fijian moth as a congenial host. It was decided to try the experiment, and the story of the collection of the parasitised larvae of the Artona moth at Batu Gajan, in the Federated Malay States, the final arrival of a few survivors at distant r iji, and the raising there of a host of parasites from those survivors shows what can be done by co-ordinated and enthusiastic co-operation. It was founcf that the parasite took so kindly to the Levuana grub that in three years the threat of disaster to the copra industry of the islands had been removed.