from American Scientist
January-February 2012
When China opened its borders to international commerce in the late 1970s, it got more imports than it really wanted. Among the extras was the red turpentine beetle (Dendroctonus valens), a wood-boring species native to North America. In its home range, D. valens is an unremarkable forest dweller that mainly colonizes dead and dying trees. But in China, it has wiped out more than seven million vigorous pines in the past dozen years, and it looks poised to spread through much of Eurasia.