The internet can be great as a kind of library of information, can't it?
I think I've rooted out what the worm that got into the cacti plants is called. The news isn't good. It's an invasive species called the cactus moth (Cactoblastis cactorum) and was first seen in Texas along the Gulf coast in 2017. Only six years ago. It's spread is predicted to go into Mexico and throughout the southwest U.S. It's capable of wiping out essentially the entire population of native cacti. It was introduced in Australia and has a monument erected to it for eradicating species Opuntia there. But in Mexico and in parts of the U.S., Opuntia species are both a commercial crop and also an important indigenous species in the ecology. At the current time, there are no good controls for the pest. There are diseases and parasitic wasps that keep it in bounds in its place of origin in South America, but those controls are not present here. Scientific studies are being done to try and determine if they can be introduced as natural controls with becoming invasive species themselves. The foregoing is derived from several sources I turned up trying to figure out what it was and is a sort of sketchy summary of what I found browsing the articles. FWIW.
