Dendroctonus ponderosae

The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) is a species of bark beetle native to the forests of western North America from Mexico to central British Columbia. It has a hard black exoskeleton, and measures approximately 5 millimetres (1?4 in), about the size of a grain of rice. In western North America, an outbreak of the beetle and its microbial associates affected wide areas of lodgepole pine forest, including more than 160,000 km2 (40 million acres) of forest in British Columbia. The outbreak in the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado began in 1996 and has caused the destruction of millions of acres/hectares of ponderosa and lodgepole pine trees. At the peak of the outbreak in 2009, over 16,000 km2 (4.0 million acres) were affected. The outbreak then declined due to better environmental conditions, but many vulnerable trees had already been destroyed. Mountain pine beetles inhabit ponderosa, whitebark, lodgepole, Scots, jack, limber, Rocky Mountain bristlecone, and Great Basin bristlecone pine trees. Normally, these insects play an important role in the life of a forest, attacking old or weakened trees, and speeding development of a younger forest. However, unusually hot, dry summers and mild winters in 2004 C2007 throughout the United States and Canada, along with forests filled with mature lodgepole pine, led to an unprecedented epidemic. The outbreak may have been the largest forest insect blight seen in North America since European colonization. Monocultural replanting, and a century of forest fire suppression have contributed to the size and severity of the outbreak, and the outbreak itself may, with similar infestations, have significant effects on the capability of northern forests to remove greenhouse gases (such as CO2) from the atmosphere. Because of its impact on forestry, the transcriptome and the genome of the beetle have been sequenced. It was the second beetle genome to be sequenced.

from Wikipedia