It's a bad time to be an amorous male emerald ash borer.

Penn State scientists, working with their counterparts in Hungary, have created a fake female emerald ash borer that electrocutes any paramour that lands on her in an effort to mate.

While the project could eventually serve as a way to control the tree-killing pest, which is on track to cause a predicted $760 million in ash tree damage to Pennsylvania's 3 million ash trees, scientists' focus is to further improve traps to maximize their potential as part of an early detection tool for emerald ash borers.

These fake deadly insects might be in public use in 2016.

Thomas Baker, a professor of entomology at Penn State, said the electrifying decoys also could help control other borers in the country.He said one borer, which has not yet been found in the United States, kills oak trees via the same methods of its cousin, the emerald ash borer.Female borers lay their eggs on a tree's bark, and the hatching larvae crawls underneath. The larvae interrupts the tree's circulatory system and kills it within two years.The ash borer entered North America in southeastern Michigan in 2002 by stowing away in shipping liners from Southeast Asia, where it is an indigenous species.By the time the tiny green beetle made its June 2007 Pennsylvania debut in a young ash tree in Cranberry Township, the species had destroyed more than 20 million ash trees in several states.The species has now invaded 55 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. Only McKean County and counties on the extreme eastern end of the state have not yet confirmed the pest's arrival.

Baker said the traps outfitted with the fake female ash borers also trap the murdered males in a bag and wirelessly report to scientists the activity at the trap site.That way the scientific process could be sped up because the wait for workers to visit the trap sites and report activity would be eliminated.He said a nonsticky trap, unlike the ones that have been used since the infestation began, would provide a clearer view of the goings-on at a trap because it is not cluttered with debris and dead insects.Once the beetle is detected for the first time at a trap site, Baker said a grid would be created to look for other signs of infestation in the area.Baker said the new traps could be deployed on a research level next summer and on a large-scale basis in the summer of 2016.He said scientists would work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture branch and the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to deploy the traps.The traps would be deployed on park land and on private property, with the property owner's permission, according to a grid created by the inspection service.“They would be monitored by APHIS and state forest personnel,” Baker said.

Creating an attractive, but deadly, fake female was the focus of much of the work by professors at Penn State, the USDA and entomologists and engineers in Hungary.Baker said the team created a decoy using an actual female borer as a mold, plus one made with a 3-D printer. The scientists pinned the two decoys, plus a dead female borer on leaves in the forests of Hungary to see which best attracted wild males.They found the decoy made by the 3-D printer was unsuccessful because the males were attracted to the light-scattering bumps and spines on the females' heads and wings, which the 3-D version lacked.“This has gotten a lot of interest,” Baker said. “Those in the field of bioreplication and bioengineering are excited.”Sven-Erik Spichiger, entomology program manager at the state Department of Agriculture, is on board with the project.

“It's a positive thing because the research community has not given up and continues to look for ways to combat this pest,” Spichiger said. “It's not a silver bullet.”He said the new technology is the result of extended observation in Hungary, where scientists at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Forest Research Institute have been studying the borer's behavior for several years.Spichiger said that for now, the traps are being seen as a potentially effective research tool.“If we can find it when it gets to a brand new area, we have a better shot at containing or slowing it down,” Spichiger said. “I'd like to see them develop this even further, and who knows, someday it could be a control method.”He said the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has begun identifying ash trees that are successful seed producers to repopulate forests in case science wins the battle against the emerald ash borer.The release of sterile males is also a strategy being considered in the scientific world as a potential means of control. Also, there are three tiny, stingless wasps that control the pest's numbers in its native Southeast Asia that were released in 2011.It could take a decade to determine whether the wasps are having an limiting effect on the emerald ash borer, Spichiger said.“The good news is, nobody's given up,” he said.Spichiger advises residents who have cut down ash trees to keep or burn the wood and not to take it into another community. He said the borer's larvae could hatch and crawl out of the wood for up to two years after the tree has been cut down.More information is available by searching “emerald ash borer” at www.agriculture.state.pa.us.