 Today, we're going to talk a little bit about what's been happening this past summer and why. We had, in many locations, we had early populations, some a little later. One of the things we did see in most of them was high survivorship from early on the season, early on the season on. I don't have anybody notice, but it was kind of hot and dry this year. Anybody really take note of that? Yeah, okay. Early in the season, one of the things that keeps our insect populations in check are something we call animal pathogenic fungi. It's a fancy name that means fungus that kills insects. And you'd be surprised how much mortality we actually get from that. We don't have grasshoppers up to our hips every year, despite what you saw this year. It doesn't happen every year. I know the numbers we saw this year can make you forget that. I had a student, we used to have an honest to goodness locust in North America, Rocky Mountain Locust. It's gone extinct now. I tell this story in my anemology class, I had one of my former students call up today and said, Anne, remember when you told us about the Rocky Mountain Locust? I said, yeah. He said, remember you said they were extinct? I said, yeah. He said, are you sure? I said, yeah. These fungal pathogens, these insect killing fungus get established early in the season. So these young insects that are just coming out of the egg, the small larvae and the small nymphs are very susceptible to this. These fungi will attack these insects, they'll infect them, and the insects die. And so that piece of mortality that you get, it's not going to wipe out the population, but that piece of mortality you get early in the year really kind of sets up what kind of populations you're going to see later. And so insects have this stage life, they go have eggs and then larvae or nymphs and then either a pupae or go directly to an adult. So these different stages have different levels of mortality in them. And that one that happens early is fairly important to what's going to happen to the population dynamics, can really limit the populations later on. To remove that mortality, and all of a sudden you have big populations. So this year we had heavy populations of aphids and small grains. Again, aphids got started early, they kept going. Why? No fungal disease. Same thing with Colorado potato beetle, same thing with our grasshoppers. So that part of being dry and hot impacts that early season mortality. But it's not the only part of the story. Another part of the story is the warmer it is, insects are cold-blooded. They don't control their own temperature like we do. So our physiological processes, our digestion and reproduction, all of our physiological processes are basically controlled under a very narrow limit. You basically generate your own heat, so you can do that. If you start getting a fever and it gets too high, you start feeling bad. Some of your physiological processes aren't going so well. In insects, they have a lot more tolerance of different temperatures. They have to, because they don't generate their own heat. They warm themselves by ambient temperature, right? So whatever temperature it is out here, that's what temperature they're experiencing. So their physiological processes can speed up a lot more and tolerate higher temps as the temperature changes. And that's what happens. You have them, all of a sudden, moving faster. When it gets really, really warm, they start moving faster. Not only that, they start to digest faster, which means they're going to feed more. They also reproduce a lot more. The reproductive drives go up, the reproductive potential goes up. But more importantly, if you've got an insect like aphids, for example, that have multiple generations in a year, all of a sudden their developmental time, which is closely linked to temperature, goes down and it decreases. And that means you're turning out more generations per year. And on top of that, you don't have that early season mortality. So now you've got more rapidly generating populations, not getting dead early on, being alive to reproduce, and you get expanding populations. And that's what's kind of happening this past summer. The business about having generations get shorter was really noted with Colorado potato beetle this year. When we started seeing them go through their larval stages really, really quickly. We started having things go through a second to third instar in a matter of days rather than in a week. So things were really rapid this year. Those developmental times really decreased. And again, that's linked to temperature. What this means for Colorado potato beetle is typically up here, what we've come to say when we see our summer adults, right? The overwinter's adults, the springtime, they start wandering into the potato fields from wherever they spent the winter. It's kind of like most of us coming back from Arizona. So we wander in, get our jobs going again. So they get into the fields, they start reproducing, they have eggs. Then you see the larvae, right? The larvae feed for a little while, a couple of weeks maybe, or shorter this summer. And then they'll drop to the ground, they burrow in, and they pupate. And then out comes summer adults. And that usually happens for us in July, right? And we usually refer to those summer adults as, that's the second generation adult. Actually, it's not. They're the ones that are going to overwinter and be around next spring. So we actually only have one true generation in this area of Minnesota and in Minnesota in general. It's very rare for us to see a second flush of summer adults. We've already seen that down in Central Mint. You've got plots in Becker that are experiencing, what was it? What was it? Thousands? Thousands. So Josie is saying she's got thousands of beetles in her plots. These are second, this is our second flush of adults. We've already seen our summer adults, what, end of June, early July. So yeah, we've seen two complete generations in Minnesota. That is extremely rare. I haven't seen it, and I've been working here for 24 years. So I talked to some of the guys who have been here longer. And one of them said, yeah, I saw that I think maybe 40 years ago. So yeah, it's a rare event. But it's all because these things are being driven through by temperature. For those of you who are doing seed potatoes, I can tell you that the PVY vectors are starting to slow down a little bit. We've seen three weeks of decrease. Now I was a little concerned because we were ahead of where we were last year, just up to about three weeks ago. And then all of a sudden, we started seeing our populations decrease. And that's very unusual for us. Our populations don't usually decrease until third, fourth week of August. You know, so right now. And we started seeing that decrease the end of July. So I think what we're also looking at here is not only does heat kind of speed up insect populations, but also it has an effect on plant growth. So this year, we saw small grains come mature very, very early, which means we saw the small grain aphids, which make up a large part of the stuff that's flying into potatoes later season. We saw those come off that grain early because the grain senesced early and they were flying early. And then all of a sudden those things stopped. We saw fewer and fewer aphids in our in our flight traps. So the good news is I think we're over the hill for for aphids as well. But that's kind of in a snapshot. What's going on when you see these these populations? They seem to be eating more rapidly this summer. I was I was hearing a lot of reports of that. I was hearing reports of there seem to be going through their larval stages really, really quickly, getting in adults coming out early. I had a report early today. I was talking to Justin. He thinks they may be seeing second generation up here, you had said possibly. So and it is possible that we could get them up here, whether or not if you're seeing third and fourth instar larvae right now in the field, whether those pupate and come out as adults. I hope not. But it is possible if it gets warm again. Now, the reason all this is important is those summer generation adults that came out first, they're still surviving unless they're been sprayed out of a field. But if they're not treated, they're still surviving. And they're going to be going off to overwintering locations like that fence row of that, you know, those tree lines. That's kind of where the overwinter. So they're probably getting ready to leave those fields anyway. If we have a second generation of adults, that just means we've got more overwintering, which means that if the winter conditions, depending on the winter conditions, we could have more adults moving into the fields next spring. That's why that kind of second generation of summer flush adults is important. Why should we be a little careful next year? What do I have for good news? OK. You know, you're going to hear a lot less on pathology today. So I figured, you know, it didn't look that bad. And and Gary will talk about Lake Blight situation. But I figure if they've got good news, I got to give bad because that's what pest management is. It's either doom or gloom. You're going to get one of the other. So. Oh, well, in the Colorado Potato Beetle test, we did a lot of chem trials this year. And what I can tell you is, although I can't discuss what they are, I can tell you that there are some products that are going to be coming online, hopefully getting into registration. And finding registration for potatoes that look really good, have good efficacy against Colorado Potato Beetle. And that's a really good idea for us, a good thing for us, because it'll give us some extra tools in our rotational toolbox and gives us something else to go to once we're once we're finished. And that's actually a pretty common problem right now. I'm getting calls from guys in Central Minnesota who are saying, yeah, I've got these second flush of summer adults. And I've rotated through all my chemistry. What do I spray? So actually having a couple of extra products is a good thing.