Tomicus piniperda
| Tomicus piniperda | |
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| Adult feeding in pine shoot, Hungary | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Coleoptera |
| Family: | Curculionidae |
| Subfamily: | Scolytinae |
| Tribe: | Hylesinini |
| Genus: | Tomicus |
| Species: | T. piniperda |
| Binomial name | |
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Tomicus piniperda (Linnaeus, 1758) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Tomicus piniperda (common pine shoot beetle) is a bark beetle native throughout Europe, northwestern Africa, and northern Asia. It is one of the most destructive shoot-feeding species in northern Europe.
Its primary host plant is Scots pine Pinus sylvestris, but it also uses European black pine P. nigra, maritime pine P. pinaster, eastern white pine P. strobus, red pine P. resinosa, jack pine P. banksiana and other pines to a small extent, and more rarely on spruce Picea and larch Larix.
It is black or dark brown, 3.5–4.8 mm long, with a cylindrical body, rounded at the head and abdomen ends. It breeds in recently dead and dying trees, most often windblown trees lying on the ground but also in e.g. fire-killed standing trees. The adults tunnel a breeding gallery in spring, up to 25 cm long, parallel to the wood grain, where they lay their eggs. On hatching, the larvae chew through the phloem radially from the gallery for several months, emerging as new adults in late summer. The adults then feed through the autumn and winter on the pith in strong apical shoots of healthy young trees, killing the bored-out shoots. This does not kill the tree, but causes damage to the growth form, reducing the economic value of the timber by reducing growth rates and stem straightness. There is one generation per year, with most adults dying after breeding many times, though a few survive to breed again a year later. Unlike most bark beetles, Tomicus piniperda does not use pheromones for pre-breeding association and pairing, but instead homes in on the resin scent emitted by damaged specimens of the host species.
Species closely related to Tomicus piniperda include Tomicus minor (lesser pine shoot beetle), with a similar distribution but ecologically separated, using standing dead pines and with its breeding galleries across the grain, not parallel to it;Tomicus destruens in the Mediterranean region, which differs in details of ecology, infesting primarily stone pine P. pinea and maritime pine P. pinaster; and Tomicus yunnanensis in southwestern China on Yunnan pine Pinus yunnanensis. Historically, these species were often not distinguished from T. piniperda, but they are reproductively isolated, which has consequences for pest control.
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Wikipedia