Chrysomela populi
Poplar Leaf Beetle ( Chrysomela populi ), who has lost his way on a Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). However, the kind never eats of conifers, only from willows and poplars.
The cottonwood leaf beetle ( Chrysomela populi ) is a beetle of the family of leaf beetles ( Chrysomelidae ). It comes in Eurasia to forest and roadsides, where there 's food plants, poplars ( particularly popular among the various poplar species are aspen ) growing and grazing. It is also called " willow leaf beetle".
- 2.1 predators and protective behavior
- 2.2 Reproduction
- 3.1 Notes and references
- 3.2 Literature
- 3.3 External links
Features
Poplar leaf beetles are ten to twelve millimeters long. The neck plate is bronze-green or black in color, while the elytra orange to red are. At the tips of dark spots can be seen. The body is oval shaped, stocky built and strongly arched upward. Legs and antennae are black.
The larvae have a base color that varies from white to gray-green and even bright green. However, they have a black pronotum, black Abdominalränder and are peppered with many black dot-like outgrowths, which makes them all appear black in total at first glance. They also have rows arranged dirty white meat cones, which they can enter and leave.
Similar Species
- Chrysomela Saliceti Suffrian, 1851. Endflecke The black on the elytra are missing. On the elytra edge there is a double row of dots.
- Chrysomela tremulae Fabricius, 1787. The pronotum is twice as wide as long.
Synonyms
- Melasoma populi (Linnaeus, 1758)
Way of life
Predators and protective behavior
Their predators include many species of Tachinidae ( Tachinidae ) and the parasitic wasps ( Ichneumonidae ). It was also ( DELLA BEFFA, 1949) observed that the carnivorous larvae of Schwebfliegenart Xanthandrus eat comptus the poplar leaf beetle. In case of danger, they give off a fragrant strictly according phenolic secretions in order to expel the enemy. This secretion, they produce from salicylic acid, which is in turn present in the leaves.
Reproduction
The fertilized female lays her eggs on the underside of leaves of the host plants, what happens in the first generation in the spring right after the leaves emerge. The larvae hatch after about 12 days, eating their way only to the underside of leaves along and catch on after a while also to skeletonize the leaf, that is to devour it, until only the veins are left.
After three weeks, when they are old enough, they pupate. Upside down on the leaves of their food plant they spend 10 days as a doll. After the young beetles have continued the first feeding after Larvenart, they take care of a second generation. It makes per year for two to three generations, so that the beetles are normally encountered from May to August .. The second generation, however, is only in September adult, so a third generation can grow only under favorable conditions under which they are to be found even longer. In outbreaks, the animals can cause considerable damage to willows, the poplars, aspens in particular, however, the damage remains low.