Schools Tracking the Woolly Bully-2015

Schools Tracking  the Woolly Bully at field site and field trip

Students from Amherst Regional High School and the MacDuffie School look near and far to find traces of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid and its impact on our forests.

Amherst Regional High School South Campus students took an up-close look at some mysterious tiny creatures they discovered while searching for the Woolly Adelgid at their schoolyard field site. 

Photos by Alex Walsh

Here are some pictures a student took when we were looking at a woolly hemlock branch under the microscope.  These look like spiders.  We noticed a lot of web-like material in addition to the egg sacs.

Karen MurphyAmherst H.S. South Campus Teacher

Response from Project Ecologist, Dr. David Orwig:

Great pictures of spider mites, which are very common on hemlock branches, and why you observed web-like material.
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To learn More about the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid and its Impact on our Hemlock forests:  

See location and data for these schools and others who are tracking the presence of the invasive insect, The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid on our interactive field site map at: 
Woolly Bully sitemap-datalink

View a short video clip about hemlock trees today at:  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGk-VBRDwwo#t=96

See more about the Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology Woolly Bully Project open to any school at: http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/woolly-bully-invasive-pest-hemlock-woolly-adelgid

See the recent book about Hemlock written by Harvard Forest ecologists, at:  Hemlock; A Forest Giant On the Edge