The California Oak Worm aka: Phryganidia californica

TH
by tori hunt1 view·Updated Jun 4, 2021
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  1. Hello everyone today I will be presenting on the California
  2. oak worm.
  3. Ak the fragrant media California ca I will be breaking
  4. this presentation up into a few sections including a little
  5. bit about the worm, the environment it lives in its
  6. lifespan in history as well as some other interesting information
  7. to help us learn about it.
  8. Yeah. Yeah.
  9. So some physical characteristics of the worm in its larvae
  10. stage is that it has a brown head.
  11. It has typically yellow to greenish body and it's about
  12. one inch at maturity.
  13. And as it gets more and more mature those stripes
  14. began to turn bright yellow and a little bit of
  15. a deeper brown to help distinguish itself.
  16. Yeah, it has four stages of life.
  17. It has the egg stage the larvae stage that we
  18. will mainly be focusing on today as well as the
  19. pupae stage in the moth stage.
  20. Yeah. Just to help us get a little bit of
  21. background in a few fun facts.
  22. These are the oak worms, eggs and something kind of
  23. interesting is that they're white and they have small reddish
  24. insides and a little bit on the outside.
  25. And they are typically laid in the afternoon of spring
  26. and summer.
  27. The larvae stage that we will be talking about when
  28. they come out of those eggs, they are about 1/10
  29. of an inch.
  30. And they feed on oak trees which I will be
  31. talking about in a second.
  32. Yeah. And this is them in their pube a stage.
  33. And when they look like this, they attached to the
  34. tree's trunk.
  35. And here it is in its final form as a
  36. moth. And you can see has these dark, desisting distinguished
  37. dark veins running through its wings.
  38. Now I want to really want to talk about their
  39. impact on the environment um and its ecosystem.
  40. So they are not fatal.
  41. But they are intense.
  42. Two oak trees, specifically the um coast live oaks that
  43. are mostly found in the Sf Bay area and the
  44. Monterey Bay area.
  45. So when their larvae they actually eat these trees.
  46. Um that's what fuels them.
  47. But sometimes they can have outbreaks such as this tree
  48. that you see there in which there are three generations
  49. of these California oak worms in one year which can
  50. completely decimate.
  51. Um the tree and it can actually cause the foliage
  52. as we can see here.
  53. And this can last over 1-2 years.
  54. But if it continually happens every single year and more
  55. and more larvae are attacking the tree, it can eventually
  56. kill a tree.
  57. Yeah now they do have predators.
  58. Um They have parasites that sometimes come from acorns and
  59. birds and insects and that is the end of my
  60. presentation and I hope you all enjoyed it and learned
  61. a little bit more about the California oak worm.
  62. Thank you.