David Dunn: A Very Brief Summary

A music professor named David Dunn has received a patent on his procedures and technology for fighting bark beetles in the western United States. Dunn first became interested in the bark beetles and their ability to destroy drought weakened pine trees, when there was an influx of tree deaths in Northern New Mexico, where he was living at the time. Dunn began to wonder what that much biological activity sounded like, so he recorded the bark beetles using a listening device he built for ten dollars. After recording many different types of bark beetles that lived in trees at various stages in their life cycles, he created a sound composition that showed incredible diversity. Two Northern Arizona University forest scientists heard about Dunn’s work and offered to help push his research further.
From this patent, Dunn and his colleagues, Richard Hofstetter and Reagan McGuire, are looking to develop a range of products to combat the beetles. I wonder what products one could use to combat bark beetles through