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The Curculionidae are a family of weevils, commonly called snout beetles or true weevils. They are one of the largest animal families with 6,800 genera and 83,000 species described worldwide. They are the sister group to the family Brentidae.
Ambrosia beetles are beetles of the weevil subfamilies Scolytinae and Platypodinae, 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. Symbiotic fungi produce and detoxify ethanol, which is an attractant for Ambrosia beetles and likely prevents growth of antagonistic pathogens and selects for other beneficial symbionts. The majority of ambrosia beetles colonize xylem of recently dead trees, but some attack stressed trees that are still alive, and a few species attack healthy trees. Species differ in their preference for different parts of trees, different stages of deterioration, and in the shape of their tunnels ("galleries"). However, the majority of ambrosia beetles are not specialized to any taxonomic group of hosts, unlike most phytophagous organisms including the closely related bark beetles. One species of ambrosia beetle, Austroplatypus incompertus exhibits eusociality, one of the few organisms outside of Hymenoptera and Isoptera to do so.
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 aggressive species in Europe is the spruce ips Ips typographus. A tiny bark beetle, the coffee berry borer, Hypothenemus hampei is a major pest on coffee plantations around the world.
Frass refers loosely to the more or less solid excreta of insects, and to certain other related matter.
The term woodboring beetle encompasses many species and families of beetles whose larval or adult forms eat and destroy wood. In the woodworking industry, larval stages of some are sometimes referred to as woodworms. The three most species-rich families of woodboring beetles are longhorn beetles, bark beetles and weevils, and metallic flat-headed borers. Woodboring is thought to be the ancestral ecology of beetles, and bores made by beetles in fossil wood extend back to the earliest fossil record of beetles in the Early Permian (Asselian), around 295-300 million years ago.
The term mycangium is used in biology for special structures on the body of an animal that are adapted for the transport of symbiotic fungi. This is seen in many xylophagous insects, which apparently derive much of their nutrition from the digestion of various fungi that are growing amidst the wood fibers. In some cases, as in ambrosia beetles, the fungi are the sole food, and the excavations in the wood are simply to make a suitable microenvironment for the fungus to grow. In other cases, wood tissue is the main food, and fungi weaken the defense response from the host plant.
Fungivory or mycophagy is the process of organisms consuming fungi. Many different organisms have been recorded to gain their energy from consuming fungi, including birds, mammals, insects, plants, amoebas, gastropods, nematodes, bacteria and other fungi. Some of these, which only eat fungi, are called fungivores whereas others eat fungi as only part of their diet, being omnivores.
Laurel wilt, also called laurel wilt disease, is a vascular disease that is caused by the fungus Raffaelea lauricola, which is transmitted by the invasive redbay ambrosia beetle, Xyleborus glabratus. The disease affects and kills members of the laurel family. The avocado is perhaps the most commercially valuable plant affected by laurel wilt.
Ambrosiella is a genus of ambrosia fungi within the family Ceratocystidaceae. It was circumscribed by mycologists Josef Adolph von Arx and Grégoire L. Hennebert in 1965 with Ambrosiella xylebori designated as the type species. All Ambrosiella species are obligate symbionts of ambrosia beetles. Several former species were moved to genera Raffaelea, Hyalorhinocladiella, or Phialophoropsis, and there were nine species recognized 2017. Twelve species in as of 2023. One species, Ambrosiella cleistominuta, has been observed to produce a fertile sexual state with cleistothecious ascomata.
The foamy bark canker is a disease affecting oak trees in California caused by the fungus Geosmithia pallida and spread by the Western oak bark beetle. This disease is only seen through the symbiosis of the bark beetles and the fungal pathogen. The bark beetles target oak trees and bore holes through the peridermal tissues, making tunnels within the phloem. The fungal spores are brought into these tunnels by the beetles and begin to colonize the damaged cells inside the tunnels. Symptoms of the developing fungus include wet discoloration seeping from the beetle entry holes as the fungus begins to consume phloem and likely other tissues. If bark is removed, necrosis of the phloem can be observed surrounding the entry hole(s). As the disease progresses, a reddish sap and foamy liquid oozes from entry holes, thus giving the disease the name foamy bark canker. Eventually, after the disease has progressed, the tree dies. This disease is important because of its detrimental effects on oak trees and its ability to spread to several new Californian counties in just a couple of years.
Raffaelea fusca is a mycangial fungus, first isolated from female adults of the redbay ambrosia beetle, Xyleborus glabratus.
Platypus apicalis, known by its common name the New Zealand pinhole boring beetle, is a wood-boring beetle endemic to New Zealand and found throughout the North and South Island in a range of environments.
Euwallacea fornicatus is a species complex consisting of multiple cryptic species of ambrosia beetles, known as an invasive species in California, Israel and South Africa. The species has also been unintentionally introduced into exotic greenhouses in several European countries. As the rest of the ambrosia beetles, E. fornicatus larvae and adults feed on a symbiotic fungus carried in a specific structure called mycangium. In E. fornicatus, the mycangium is located in the mandible. The combination of massive numbers of beetles with the symbiotic fungus kills trees, even though the fungus alone is a weak pathogen.
Xylosandrus compactus is a species of ambrosia beetle. Common names for this beetle include black twig borer, black coffee borer, black coffee twig borer and tea stem borer. The adult beetle is dark brown or black and inconspicuous; it bores into a twig of a host plant and lays its eggs, and the larvae create further tunnels through the plant tissues. These beetles are agricultural pests that damage the shoots of such crops as coffee, tea, cocoa and avocado.
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.
Platypus quercivorus, the oak ambrosia beetle, is a species of weevil and pest of broad-leaved trees. This species is most commonly known for vectoring the fungus responsible for excessive oak dieback in Japan since the 1980s. It is found in Japan, India, Indonesia, New Guinea, and Taiwan.
Cnestus mutilatus, commonly known as the camphor shot borer, camphor shoot borer, or sweetgum ambrosia beetle, is a species of ambrosia beetle in the subfamily Scolytinae of the weevil family Curculionidae. It is native to Asia, but has been established as an invasive species in the United States since 1999.
Euwallacea perbrevis, commonly known as tea shot-hole borer, is a species of weevil native to South and South-East Asia through to Australia, but introduced to Western countries.
Xyleborus monographus, the Mediterranean oak borer, is a species of ambrosia beetle in the family Curculionidae. It is native to oaks in the regions around the Mediterranean Sea, but since 2019 has been found in California, where the oak trees it infests may be more vulnerable.
References
- ↑ Paul Rugman-Jones; Richard Stouthamer. "Polyphagous- and Kuroshio shot hole borers: invasive Euwallacea spp. threatening Californian agriculture and natural areas" (PDF). Trec.ifas.ufl.edu. Archived from the original (PDF) on 31 August 2021. Retrieved 16 March 2022.
- ↑ Mueller, U. G., N. M. Gerardo, et al. (2005): The Evolution of Agriculture in Insects. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 36: 563–569.
- ↑ Malloch, D., and M. Blackwell. 1993. Dispersal biology of ophiostomatoid fungi. p. 195–206. In: Ceratocystis and Ophiostoma: Taxonomy, Ecology and Pathology. Eds., Wingfield, M.J., K.A. Seifert, and J.F. Webber. APS, St. Paul.
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