The plague of Peruvian carob

Tiny, voracious, it’s eating massively the leaves of the most emblematic tree of Piura.

 

Attacked carob trees (Prosopis pallida) in Cruz Verde, a town of Malingas Community , in Tambograndé, Peru, as they looked like on July 27^th, 2023. Locals told FACTORTIERRA that they also noticed defoliation of Caesalpinia paipai in the acres and Malingas Mount. All photographs along this ENTRY by Milton Garcia, distributed by FACTORTIERRA.

 

Again, the Peruvian carob trees (Prosopis pallida) are losing their leaves –specialists and activists already have a usual suspect this time, despite they couldn’t quantify the extension, yet, so the cost of the damage.

 

It’s about the Enallodiplosis discordis (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae), a kind of tiny fly from the large cecidomid genus, that seems to flourish in dry, desert climates. It was systematized in 1994 by Raymond J. Gagne for a research published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, now in care of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

 

What it’s not clear for the scientists is how this insect inserts inside the Equatorial Dry Forest ecosystem. At the moment, they are convinced this is about a plague, literally, eating the leaves of the Peruvian carob trees.

 

Centennial plague

The first scientific trace of Enallodiplosis discordis is in Pampa Tamarugal, a part of Atacama Desert (Chilean Northern) as it was published in 1989.

 

Ten years before, in 1979, another investigation pointed out it was already detected in 19^th century, in the same zone, during the boom of Nitrate. In fact, when the Chilean Government reforestedit in 1964 by using Prosopis across 247,000 acres, it published a forest handling guideline and it called tamarugo plague, as the local variety of Prosopis is known.

 

The cecidomids are dipterous insects (owning two wings) that can destroy, feed from microscopic fungus, or living at the expense of other species what they use to serve from for migrating. As they are a millimetric size, they are not capable to cover long distances by themselves.

 

The studies since the 1980s establish they attack not only the Peruvian carob but they could be enraging the whole Prosopis genus (Leguminosae: Mimosoideae), within it groups about 45 tree sub-species that live mainly in arid, sub-arid environments in the Americas, Asia, and Africa.

 

In south America, the cecidomids have been detected in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Peru. According to the Peruvian Journal of Biology (RPB as its initials in Spanish) published in December 2020, “Between 2001 and 2017, Prosopis in Peru have suffered from an extensive defoliation and regressive death, with the consequent deforestation and diminishing growth of carob shiafths.”

 

Check here the issue of the Peruvian Journal of Biology.

 

The regressive death term, in agronomical language, evidences us it’s about a fast-spread plague. The paper establishes that the places where it was detected are Departments Íca, La Libertad, Lambayequé, and Piura.

 

Algarrobina and honey threatened

“The Pacific’s coastal desertic regions  of Peru and Chile hosts Prosopis species (Leguminosae: Mimosoideae), well adapted trees to the conditions of the desert and with key functions in dry forest ecosystems,” it’s explained in the RPB paper.

 

The archaeological evidence establishes those trees have served the people who settled in actual territories of both countries 8000 years ago. To put it in perspective, Caral Citadel (Supé, Peru) is 5000 years old according to the Peruvian Government, and the estimated age of Malingas Petroglyphs (Tambograndé, Peru) is 4000 years according to the FACTORTIERRA research.

 

The defoliation of Prosopis affects directly the formation of fruits as carob shiafth. As there are not leaves, flowers don’t appear, so it’s impossible any kind of pollination to happen – bees are mainly in charge of. As they are absent, there is not honey production neither. And, of course, no carob shiafth, no algarrobina or carob energizing syrup neither.

 In 2019, Peru’s National Forest & Wild Fauna Service estimated that Piura Department is around 3900 square miles of carob, a kind that it catalogued as threatened and vulnerable. This variety of Prosopis occupies almost 30% of the whole department’s territory, and, for instance, it’s the most emblematic tree of its coast.

 

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