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Trees face twin devils

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Thank you for your recent, timely and in-depth article on the horrors of increasing bark beetle infestations (HCN, 7/19/04: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers). In this report, changes in beetle life histories were targeted as the principal effect of climate change. However, rising temperatures and drought are apt to affect plant defenses as well.

Trees facing the twin devils of drought-induced declines in photosynthetic rates, and temperature-induced higher nighttime respiration rates, are losing the very carbon-based resources needed to defend themselves (by resins) against beetle attack. Together with the described changes in beetle life histories, this is a frightening picture indeed.

Diane W. Davidson
Salt Lake City, Utah

The author is a biology professor at the University of Utah.



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