Los Angeles Times

As shutdown drags on, scientists scramble to keep insects, plants and microbes alive

Three days a week, Don Weber shows up to work at the U.S. Department of Agriculture campus in Beltsville, Md. The parking lot is empty and the hallways are dark. Like other federal facilities across the country, the lab is closed because of the partial government shutdown.

"It's like a ghost town," said Weber, an entomologist.

But he has to perform an important task: feeding the hundreds of insects he raises in his lab, which keep hatching, mating and dying, oblivious to the political showdown in Washington, D.C.

For the brown marmorated stinkbugs, a major crop pest that Weber studies, he supplies a feast of sunflower seeds and organic green beans. The ornately patterned harlequin bugs, on the other hand, prefer home-grown mustard and collard greens.

"Insect rearing is a

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