文档介绍：When I moved in, I saw that my small house, which rested upon timbers, had soft spots in the floor where fungi were emerging through the carpets.
Upon investigating, I was both fascinated and disturbed to find huge waves of brown and white mycelium coursing through the floors and walls of my house.
Unfortunately, the spread of wood-digesting fungi such as the artist conk is well known to precede or coincide with termite and carpenter ant invasions;
the fungi soften and moisten the wood, setting the table for these munching insects.
And so I discovered that the slumping house was under attack by carpenter ants (Camponotus modoc).
Each day, I awoke to find piles of sawdust on the floor near the walls; overnight more of my house had been milled into sawdust by ants.
Visitors showed displeasure at the sawdust raining down upon them, despite my best attempts to make light of the situation.
I searched the to find information about fungi that naturally parasitize insects, and I began to read about Metarhizium molds, especially Metarhizium anisopliae, which had been used to kill termites.
I decided to give it a try and ordered a strain from mercial tissue-culture library.
The Emergence of Mycopesticides
Swarming over the are legions of insects whose diversity boggles the imagination.
Current estimates of insect diversity range from 4 to 6 million species (Kirby 2002), while fungi hover between 1 and 2 million species (Rossman 1994).
Pesticides were invented to fight destructive insects and protect crops and structures.
However, many of the chemicals used in pesticides, especially anophosphates, harm anisms, pollute water, and impair human health.
The need for alternative, nontoxic pesticides is critical, since the medical and ecological impact of toxic pesticides poses a cascading health hazard and a global threat to our biosphere.