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Invasive shothole borer and gold-spotted oak borer beetles have killed thousands of trees in Southern California.

Invasive shothole borers have sickened at least 65 varieties of SoCal urban trees — such as box elders, maples, willows, sycamores, oaks and cottonwoods — by infesting them with their primary food source, fusarium fungus.

The names of these tree-destroying beetles are ominous enough — goldspotted oak borer and invasive shothole borer — but the real nightmare is what they’re doing to our urban trees.

Researchers believe the invasive shothole borer arrived in wood pallets or products from Vietnam and/or Taiwan.

And then there’s his main gig as a research associate for the University of California Cooperative Extension’s Agriculture and Natural Resources division, crawling around big urban trees like oaks and sycamores searching for the invasive shothole borer and the goldspotted oak borer — rice-size beetles that have killed many thousands of Southern California oaks, sycamores, willows and other trees since they were discovered less than 20 years ago and could well destroy many of our urban trees if left unchecked.