CPB Overwintering Physiology
In the summertime you’ll find Colorado potato beetles happily living and munching on potato plants. Come autumn, adult beetles will drop from plants, burrow deep into the soil and enter a state of hibernation known as “diapause”. They spend the winter in this energy-saving mode where they lower their metabolism and increase their tolerance for low temperatures. This allows them to survive the long, cold winter months and come back good as new in the spring. In the Lebenzon lab, we explore the mechanistic basis for Colorado potato beetle diapause and cold tolerance.
CPB as a “non-model” model
Colorado potato beetles are not just another cute Coleopteran! With their genome fully annotated and populations accessible across North America, Europe and Asia, CPB are a great model for molecular and evolutionary physiologists alike. CPB are also quite amenable to RNA interference, making them an ideal study system for genetic manipulation. In the Lebenzon Lab we harnass all these model characteristics to ask integrative questions across multiple levels of biological organization, and test our hypotheses using powerful molecular tools.
CPB Pest Management
Although Colorado potato beetles are cute and charismatic, they also happen to be global pests of potato plants. Many populations are pesticide resistant, making their management as pests a tricky business. We have an active collaboration with Dr. Alex Torson at the United States Department of Agriculture in Fargo, North Dakota to address physiological questions relevant to CPB pest control.
Photo: Brent Sinclair