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blog
Insects of Guam Poster
Please see attached files.
Cycad Poster
Please see attached files.
Thrips attacking young banana leaves
These thrips were found damaging leaves of young banana plants by Dr. George Wall and Ric Lizama. Initial, mild damage looked like it was from a leaf mining insect. But this rapidly progressed to leaf silvering. Thrips were about 1.7 mm in length. Specimens were sent to Dr. Gillian Watson, CDFA, and Dr. Laurence Mound, CSIRO for identification.
Dr. Mound determined that the thrips are Dinurothrips hookeri Hood (Thysanoptera): "This is known widely around the Caribbean, between Florida and Brazil, but yours seems to be the first record from elsewhere (apart from one from “Malaya” in my own book about the thrips of South America – and I do not know the basis for that although it might be in the Museum in London)."
"Leaf-feeding, like its many relatives in the “greenhouse thrips” group, it has been taken on many different plants – including tomato leaves as well as various Asteraceae, plus sweet potato
and eggplant. All specimens were female."Label Data:
4f0f8f30f053d
Mangilao, Guam
13.449655°N 144.800212°E
ex banana leaf; 95% ETOH
coll. A. Moore 13 JAN 2012
4f0f8f310b64f
Mangilao, Guam
13.449655°N 144.800212°E
ex banana leaf; 70% ETOH
coll. A. Moore 13 JAN 2012
4f0f8f310be36
Mangilao, Guam
13.449655°N 144.800212°E
ex banana leaf; 70% ETOH
coll. A. Moore 13 JAN 2012The first 2 samples were sent to Dr. Gillian Watson, CDFA for identification; the remaining sample was retained in the UOG insect collection.
An additional sample was sent to Dr. Laurence Mound, CSIRO:
4f17998d7de2f
Mangilao, Guam
13.449655°N 144.800212°E
ex banana leaf; 95% ETOH
coll. A. Moore 17 JAN 2012Giant Asian mantis preys on small brown treesnakes?
Bjorn Lardner and Julie Savidge, Colorado State University biologists working on the brown treesnake on Guam have recently published an article describing an observation where a giant Asian mantis attacked a small brown treesnake. A video of the encounter was made and can be seen near the end of Bjorn's Snakes on an Island video.
In this case, the snake escaped unharmed. Would be fun to put some mantids and small snakes in a cage to see who emerges as the victor.
Marianas brown crow specimens
Here are images of two specimens of Euploea eleutho (Latreille and Godart), the Marianas brown crow, from the CNMI Insect Collection housed at Northern Marianas Colleege, Saipan. Winspans are 72 mm and 68 mm.
There is little known about this butterfly. Here is the description from Schreiner and Nafus 1997[1]:
"Originally described from Guam and found only in the Mariana Islands. In 1936 Swezey found only a few on Guam. None have been collected since 1946 in Guam or Rota, but it was collected in Alamagan and Anatahan in 1971, giving hope that the species in not yet extinct. Nothing is known about its immature stages or hosts. There is some dispute among taxonomists as whether this is a true species. According to Vane-Ackery, it should be considered a subspecies of E. algea."
Note: Schreiner and Nafus listed this butterfly as a member of the family Danaeidae. Danaeidae has recently been repositioned as a Danaeinae, a subfamily of Nymphalidae.
References
- I. Schreiner and Nafus, D. M., Butterflies of Micronesia. Agricultural Experiment Station, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Guam, 1997.
Orange Moths in Limestone Forest
Lauren Guttierez asked for an id for this moth she has been seeing in the limestone forests. This is probably a geometrid in the genus Eumelea, probably Eumelea ludovicata.
Excellent color images off the last caterpillar stage, the pupa, and adult of Eumelea ludovicata can be found in Leong and Low 2010.
According to the HOST database, larval host plants for Eumelea include Macaranga (Euphorbiaceae), Mallotus (Euphorbiaceae), and Ellataria (Zingiberaceae).
8 Spotters Group
I created the 8 Spotters Group to facilitate sharing information on the eight spot butterfly which we may not want to make public, such as exact locations of sightings and host plants. Membership to this group is by invitation, please email me if you would like to join.
To make content private to the group, click on Advanced Settings | Access in edit mode, and then click 8 Spotters Group under the Audience heading.
Platyja umminia reared from caterpillar feeding on soursop
I reared a moth from a caterpillar found feeding on soursop by Phoebe Wall. (Specimen 4da4f82a501c3).
Following a tip from Dan Rubinoff and Akito Kawahara, I was able to match the moth to Platyia umminia, one of the fruit-piercing noctuids. The HOST database[1] lists soursop (Annona ) as this moth's only host plant. This moth has been collected on Guam previously (one specimen in UOG collection). However, it is not in Don Nafus's list of crop pests.
References
Hosts Plants of Vagrans egistina
Here is a link to images of the host plant for Vagrans egistina taken by Lauren Gutierrez: