USDA researchers are using a forensic crime tool to identify insects that are natural predators to crop pests. Mike Greenstone - Entomologist with the Agricultural Research Service - says the researchers are using Preliminary Change Reaction - a tool to fingerprint bodily fluids or saliva from perpetrators of crime - to study DNA barcoding of those natural predators. Greenstone says this can help farmers.
 
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Most recently - Greenstone says he was using this technique on the Colorado Potato Beetle - which he says is a very devastating pest. He says ladybugs and other true predatory bugs feed on that beetle. Before that - Greenstone worked on aphid pests - but he has used barcoding in other ways - too.
 
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