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Platypus Cylindrus
''Platypus cylindrus'', commonly known as the oak pinhole borer, is a species of ambrosia beetle in the weevil family Scolytinae. The adults and larvae burrow under the bark of mature oak trees. It is native to Europe. Description The adult oak pinhole borer is between long, being cylindrical In cross section (hence ''cylindrus'') and, seen from above, shaped like a long, narrow rectangle. Its colour is very deep brown to black. The larvae are yellowish-white, legless grubs. Distribution The oak pinhole beetle is native to Europe. It used to be considered rare in Britain, but after the Great Storm of 1987, when many trees were blown down in southern England, it took advantage of the abundant supply of timber and became much more common. Ecology The oak pinhole borer infests mature trees, favouring stressed, dying or dead standing trees, fallen trees and logs; the insects choose a sick or moribund tree, but their activities do not kill trees. Besides oak trees, they can infest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Curtis (entomologist)
John Curtis (3 September 1791 – 6 October 1862) was an English entomologist and illustrator. Biography Curtis was born in Norwich to Frances and Charles Morgan Curtis. Charles Morgan died before his son had reached the age of 4 years. His mother, Frances, had a passion for flowers and was a professional flower grower. She encouraged her son to study natural history with a young local naturalist, Richard Walker (1791–1870). At the age of 16 John became an apprentice at a local lawyer's office in Norwich but devoted his spare time to studying and drawing insects and, with insect collecting becoming a growing craze, he found he could make a living selling the specimens he found. At this time he became a friend of Simon Wilkin (1790–1862) a wealthy landowner in Norfolk, eventually leaving his job to live with Wilkin at Cossey Hall where the extensive natural history library and specimen collection afforded him the opportunity to study his emerging over-riding passion, ento ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johan Christian Fabricius
Johan Christian Fabricius (7 January 1745 – 3 March 1808) was a Danish zoology, zoologist, specialising in "Insecta", which at that time included all arthropods: insects, arachnids, crustaceans and others. He was a student of Carl Linnaeus, and is considered one of the most important entomologists of the 18th century, having named nearly 10,000 species of animals, and established the basis for the modern insect Biological classification, classification. Biography Johan Christian Fabricius was born on 7 January 1745 at Tønder in the Duchy of Schleswig, where his father was a doctor. He studied at the gymnasium (school), gymnasium at Altona, Hamburg, Altona and entered the University of Copenhagen in 1762. Later the same year he travelled together with his friend and relative Johan Zoëga to Uppsala University, Uppsala, where he studied under Carl Linnaeus for two years. On his return, he started work on his , which was finally published in 1775. Throughout this time, he remaine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ambrosia Beetle
Ambrosia beetles are beetles of the weevil subfamilies Scolytinae and Platypodinae (Coleoptera, Curculionidae), which live in nutritional symbiosis with ambrosia fungi. The beetles excavate tunnels in dead, stressed, and healthy trees in which they cultivate fungal gardens, their sole source of nutrition. After landing on a suitable tree, an ambrosia beetle excavates a tunnel in which it releases spores of its fungal symbiont. The fungus penetrates the plant's xylem tissue, extracts nutrients from it, and concentrates the nutrients on and near the surface of the beetle gallery. Ambrosia fungi are typically poor wood degraders, and instead utilize less demanding nutrients. The majority of ambrosia beetles colonize xylem (sapwood and/or heartwood) of recently dead trees, but some attack stressed trees that are still alive, and a few species attack healthy trees.Hulcr, J. and Stelinski, L.L., 2017. The ambrosia symbiosis: From evolutionary ecology to practical management. Annual Revi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weevil
Weevils are beetles belonging to the superfamily Curculionoidea, known for their elongated snouts. They are usually small, less than in length, and herbivorous. Approximately 97,000 species of weevils are known. They belong to several families, with most of them in the family Curculionidae (the true weevils). It also includes bark beetles, which while morphologically dissimilar to other weevils in lacking the distinctive snout, is a subfamily of Curculionidae. Some other beetles, although not closely related, bear the name "weevil", such as the biscuit weevil (''Stegobium paniceum''), which belongs to the family Ptinidae. Many weevils are considered pests because of their ability to damage and kill crops. The grain or wheat weevil (''Sitophilus granarius'') damages stored grain, as does the maize weevil (''Sitophilus zeamais'') among others. The boll weevil (''Anthonomus grandis'') attacks cotton crops; it lays its eggs inside cotton bolls and the larvae eat their way ou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scolytinae
A bark beetle is the common name for the subfamily of beetles Scolytinae. Previously, this was considered a distinct family (Scolytidae), but is now understood to be a specialized clade of the "true weevil" family ( Curculionidae). Although the term "bark beetle" refers to the fact that many species feed in the inner bark (phloem) layer of trees, the subfamily also has many species with other lifestyles, including some that bore into wood, feed in fruit and seeds, or tunnel into herbaceous plants. Well-known species are members of the type genus '' Scolytus'', namely the European elm bark beetle ''S. multistriatus'' and the large elm bark beetle ''S. scolytus'', which like the American elm bark beetle '' Hylurgopinus rufipes'', transmit Dutch elm disease fungi (''Ophiostoma''). The mountain pine beetle ''Dendroctonus ponderosae'', southern pine beetle '' Dendroctonus frontalis'', and their near relatives are major pests of conifer forests in North America. A similarly aggressi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frass
Frass refers loosely to the more or less solid excreta of insects, and to certain other related matter. Definition and etymology ''Frass'' is an informal term and accordingly it is variously used and variously defined. It is derived from the German word ''Fraß'', which means the food takeup of an animal.M. Clark and O. Thyen. The Oxford-Duden German Dictionary. Publisher: Oxford University Press 1999. The English usage applies to excreted residues of anything that insects had eaten, and similarly, to other chewed or mined refuse that insects leave behind. It does not generally refer to fluids such as honeydew, but the point does not generally arise, and is largely ignored in this article. Such usage in English originated in the mid-nineteenth century at the latest. Modern technical English sources differ on the precise definition, though there is little actual direct contradiction on the practical realities. One glossary from the early twentieth century speaks of "...excreme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ambrosia Fungi
Ambrosia fungi are fungal symbionts of ambrosia beetles including the polyphagous and Kuroshio shot hole borers. There are a few dozen species described ambrosia fungi, currently placed in polyphyletic genera '' Ambrosiella'', '' Rafaellea'' and '' Dryadomyces'' (all from Ophiostomatales, Ascomycota Ascomycota is a phylum of the kingdom Fungi that, together with the Basidiomycota, forms the subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the sac fungi or ascomycetes. It is the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species. The def ...). Probably many more species remain to be discovered. Little is known about ecology of ambrosia fungi, as well as about their specificity to ambrosia beetle species. Ambrosia fungi are thought to be dependent on transport and inoculation provided by their beetle symbionts, as they have not been found in any other habitat. All ambrosia fungi are probably asexual and clonal.Malloch, D., and M. Blackwell. 1993. Dispersal biology of oph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symbiosis
Symbiosis (from Greek , , "living together", from , , "together", and , bíōsis, "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasitic. The organisms, each termed a symbiont, must be of different species. In 1879, Heinrich Anton de Bary defined it as "the living together of unlike organisms". The term was subject to a century-long debate about whether it should specifically denote mutualism, as in lichens. Biologists have now abandoned that restriction. Symbiosis can be obligatory, which means that one or more of the symbionts depend on each other for survival, or facultative (optional), when they can generally live independently. Symbiosis is also classified by physical attachment. When symbionts form a single body it is called conjunctive symbiosis, while all other arrangements are called disjunctive symbiosis."symbiosis." Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instar
An instar (, from the Latin '' īnstar'', "form", "likeness") is a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each moult (''ecdysis''), until sexual maturity is reached. Arthropods must shed the exoskeleton in order to grow or assume a new form. Differences between instars can often be seen in altered body proportions, colors, patterns, changes in the number of body segments or head width. After shedding their exoskeleton (moulting), the juvenile arthropods continue in their life cycle until they either pupate or moult again. The instar period of growth is fixed; however, in some insects, like the salvinia stem-borer moth, the number of instars depends on early larval nutrition. Some arthropods can continue to moult after sexual maturity, but the stages between these subsequent moults are generally not called instars. For most insect species, an ''instar'' is the developmental stage of the larval forms of holometabolous (complete metamorphism) or nymphal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pupa
A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in their life cycle, the stages thereof being egg, larva, pupa, and imago. The processes of entering and completing the pupal stage are controlled by the insect's hormones, especially juvenile hormone, prothoracicotropic hormone, and ecdysone. The act of becoming a pupa is called pupation, and the act of emerging from the pupal case is called eclosion or emergence. The pupae of different groups of insects have different names such as ''chrysalis'' for the pupae of butterflies and ''tumbler'' for those of the mosquito family. Pupae may further be enclosed in other structures such as cocoons, nests, or shells. Position in life cycle The pupal stage follows the larval stage and precedes adulthood ('' imago'') in insects with complete metamo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
