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Managing the pest could be complicated, Sword says, since the Old World bollworm has “known markers for pyrethroids resistance.” It also hybridizes easily with the bollworm U.S. farmers are already familiar with, and the two are difficult to differentiate. “We can’t tell the females of the two species apart,” he says, “and we have to dissect males to differentiate them. We could be looking at a genome invasion instead of an invasive species.”
It is a widely adaptable pest, feeding on more than 200 different plant species, and could be adaptable across more than half of the United States. Sword says the few Old World bollworm specimens found in Florida “failed to establish,” but wonders if hybridization may have already occurred.
