But that's just a compilation of evidence we used in Texas, on our afflicted species sans red oaks (Q texana). I was one of the early testers, as a practicing arborist, back when A&M (the principal land grant mandate researcher) was still adamant that this "new" disease killing oaks in Central texas wasn't oak wilt, but "Decline". That was because a MN study on temp survival of the fungus made these people think it's too hot here for wilt. One single study, this mistake resulted from 'taking shortcuts' in research. Sloppy science.
That opened my door, and my mind was already distant from the conventional ones, as I still am. I know this disease, the hosts, and predict it will only assume an even more virulent role. Introductions of cheaper (and suppossedly less toxic)fungistat treatments isn't the focus I like to think about. Conclusions from years of nutritional ammending - field data from survival numers of infected hosts - show clearly that the less complicated approach has resulted in more positive statistical averages. Finland has been buried under the reality of acidic increases in it's rainfall averages and has rectified the damages somewhat by neutralizing the chemistry of this fallout, which could be ignored by a forest pathologist if he were to look at individual tree health and conclude that boring insects, fungal rots, and bacterial scorches were to blame for the dieoffs experienced there. A mycologist seldom looks at the broad picture when told to study the particular suspect invading fungi that's attributing to the decline of forest health, but he just may engineer a chemical remedy to that specific parasite - when in simple fact the rainfall may have been exacerbating the soil changes necessary to promote an imbalance leading to infestation of said individual threats. It's the same thing with EAB, SPB, and a myriad of forest killers. Australia has experience with rabbits invading the grasslands...you know why? Yeah. Man.
It takes a village to raise a child, it takes an ecologist to understand the systems operating in the world. Yet the environment for such science has been impeded by business, exploited by commerce, and silenced by greed.
Oak wilt is a lovely study, a wonderful invader. But in order to understand it in order to control at least some aspects of it's fedding frenzy, we need to see a much broader picture...not just buy some juice we're told works and charge the hell out of a customer only to find three years later the magestic oak relapses, we might get to take it down, and nothing but time an a wonderful specimen was wasted. But someone made some money. That's not why I'm an arborist. There are other ways we need to practice our art, apply our science, and offer service to people that would include the trees they hire us for.
Hope that answers a little of your questions.
