10-min: SysEB, Invasive Species, Diagnostics, and Biocontrol
A comparative morphological study of red palm weevil (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus) from Pakistan and palmetto weevil (Rhynchophorus cruentatus) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) from Florida
Assistant Professor University of the Punjab Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier) and Rhynchophorus cruentatus (Fabricius) belong to the order Coleoptera and family Curculionidae, are key pests of palms species globally. Both species feed and damage palm fronds and trunks in a cryptic way. In the present study, the infestation of 10 Red Palm Weevils was investigated on 365 trees in 4 Pakistani provinces including Punjab (District Layyah and Muzaffargarh), Sindh (District Ghotki, Mirpurkhas, Sakkur, and Nawabshah), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (District Dera Ismail Khan and Bannu), Baluchistan (District Panjgur and Gwadar). While, 53 samples from Florida (8 from the Belle Glade, 37 from Fort Pierce, and 8 from the Tropical Research and Education Center) were obtained by capturing live adults from trees by using two different pheromones i.e. ferrugineol and ferrugineone (Pakistan) and Cruentol from ChemTica (Florida), respectively. The proportions of the field collected male and female bodies were compared and contrasted by measuring the size of various body sections including head size, abdomen length, full body length, pronotum width and abdominal width including prothoracic black patches and forewings (elytra) patches pattern. According to the research, there were 63 different prothoracic spot typologies in total. So, it was concluded that Rhynchophorus ferrugineus and Rhynchophorus cruentatus have high morphological diversity worldwide.
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