{"id":4677,"date":"2011-05-31T09:36:59","date_gmt":"2011-05-31T14:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/?p=4677"},"modified":"2017-05-28T19:45:41","modified_gmt":"2017-05-29T00:45:41","slug":"green-weevil-red-weevil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/green-weevil-red-weevil\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Weevil, Red Weevil (Family Curculionidae)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howdy, BugFans,<\/p>\n

The BugLady loves weevils—chunky beetles with antennae placed partway between the top and tip of their Jimmy Durante snouts. Weevils (family Curculionidae) are the largest family in the beetle order Coleoptera, which is the largest order in class Insecta, which is the largest class in the phylum Arthropoda, which is, by several orders of magnitude, the largest phylum in the kingdom Animalia (when the BugLady first learned biology there were only two kingdoms, plant and animal, plus a few troublesome critters that hovered in between). Eighty percent of animals are (bone-free) arthropods, and seventy-five percent of arthropods are insects, and every fifth living thing is a beetle.<\/p>\n

Many weevils are, well, small and drab. Here are two showy weevils—one alien and one native, one green and one red, one a minor pest and the other a big pest (the BugLady doesn\u2019t like to assign plusses or minuses to insects, but then the BugLady doesn\u2019t grow roses, either).<\/p>\n

Green Immigrant Leaf Weevil<\/h3>\n

The BugLady will insert a little confusion right up front. The alien Green Immigrant Leaf Weevil(Polydrusus sericeus<\/em>) has an also-alien doppelganger named the Pale green weevil (Polydrusus impressifrons<\/em>). In one account the BugLady read, the Green Immigrant leaf weevil (GILW) was referred to as Polydrusus sericeus impressifrons<\/em>, a.k.a. Polydrusus impressifrons<\/em>, so it would seem that some taxonomic revision may be in the works. The Polydrusus<\/em> that the BugLady sees in the strawberry patch each summer may be P. impressifrons<\/em>; she will look closer this year. At any rate, the life histories and modus operandi<\/em> of the two are similar, so the BugLady will call this one Polydrusus sericeus<\/em> (because of the black lines on the elytra) and take any resulting flack.<\/p>\n

\"weevl-grn-immigrnt-lf10-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

GILWs made their way from Europe to New York by 1906. Today they can be found all over the northeastern portion of North America, including Canada. Metallic, green scales overlay a black body, and the color may fade to grayish-green as they age. With snouts that are short and wide, they are in the broad-nosed weevil bunch.<\/p>\n

Eggs are laid in the soil in summer, and the newly-hatched larvae burrow into and feed on what one source called \u201cfine root tissue.\u201d They spend the winter underground as larvae, eat a little more in spring and then pupate, emerging as adults in late May or June.<\/p>\n

Adult GILWs nibble along the leaf edges and sometimes the buds of a number of fruit and forest trees (they especially like yellow birch). Most sources admit that they seldom get populous enough to cause injury to a tree\u2019s crown; the damage is mainly cosmetic. But there are some new studies going on about the impact of root-feeding grubs on forest tree germination that may be incriminating.<\/p>\n

A few Cool-Facts about GILWs:<\/p>\n