They hadn't sprayed chinch bugs for years. They had forgotten so much about chinch bugs that some lost entire blocks of sod before they realized what was attacking. Floratam hadn't changed, because when I confined the old garden variety of chinch bugs in the lab, they were still incapable of living on Floratam. The grass had stayed the same, but the bugs had changed. So I described and researched a new race of chinch bugs, and showed that its adaptation to Floratam is genetically inherited.
Organisms often adapt to new hosts, and plant breeders seek new defenses.
Coincidentally, when I did my sabbatical research in 1992 at the University of Nebraska, I had the opportunity to be work on another host-jumping chinch bug, which had adapted to buffalograss. No grass is completely safe. Southern chinch bug, second instar nymph. During 10 years of research on the host relationship of St. Augustinegrass to southern chinch bug, I developed a variety, FX-10, resistant to the virulent superbugs that had troubled Floratam. Although FX-10 had production problems, it represented the first Plant Patent by the University of Florida, helping shape future release policies within the University.