The Gypsy Moth

The gypsy moth was brought into the United States Of America in the year of 1868 by Leopold Trouvelot mainly to help silk spinning native caterpillars build up an immunity against specific fatal diseases. The idea, as presented by Leopold Trouvelot himself, mainly focused on creating a specific hybrid caterpillar species with some sort of resilience towards those specific diseases that native caterpillars had a very poor immunity to. During further extensive research and testing with the gypsy moths inside the testing facilities, several species managed to escape and began to populate throughout the northeastern part of the United States, throughout parts of Ontario, and throughout parts Quebec.
The gypsy moth is mainly considered an invasive species because of the disastrous affects it can have on the forests they become apart of in great multitudes. Since the year of 1980 the gypsy moth's larvae has managed to "defoliate," over one million acres of forest each year. When a tree experiences "defoliation" it essentially loses its leaves in some manner mainly due to opportunistic species,which causes that tree to use the remainder or majority of its energy during the "re-foliation process." During the re-foliation process trees have a high risk of becoming susceptible to great damage or complete devastation by certain diseases, insects, or fungi which usually kills the remainder of the tree within two to three years after their exposure to those various threats.
In the United States, the most commonly used pesticide used against gypsy moths contains carbaryl, diflubenzuron, or acephate. Diflubenzuron is mainly preferred in controlling or regulating gypsy moth populations because it does not affect the "adult" insect local inhabitants of the gypsy moth population in any negative form or manner. On the other hand, pesticides that do contain Diflubenzuron do generally affect insects that are still undergoing their molting process. Though pesticides are proven to effective in controlling the population size of gypsy moths, "mating disruption" is one of the preferred methods in controlling gypsy moth population as it can enhance the affects of "pesticides" on gypsy moths.

Work Cited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy_moths_in_the_United_States