“You’ve probably never heard of nucleopolyhedroviruses,” Dwyer said to us. The name had changed slightly since 1993 but, thanks to the tent caterpillar episode, and to Judith H. Myers, I had. Dwyer described the devastating effect of NPVs on outbreak populations of forest lepidopterans. He spoke particularly about the gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar), another little brown creature, whose outbreaks and crashes he had studied for twenty years. He said that gypsy moth larvae essentially “melt” when infected by NPV.
