May beetles , or May beetles [1] ( lat. Melolontha ) - a genus of insects of the family lamellar , living in Europe and Asia . Until the mid -1950s, they were very widespread and, being plant pests, in some years caused significant damage to agriculture . Due to the massive use of pesticides, their population has declined sharply, and in some regions they have disappeared altogether. In the early 1980s , after the prohibition of the use of a number of pesticides, their numbers began to recover.
| May beetles |
Female Melolontha melolontha |
| Scientific classification |
|---|
| No rank : | Bilateral symmetrical |
| Subtype : | Tracheo-breathing |
| Infraclass : | Winged insects |
| Treasure : | Fully Transformed Insects |
| Infrastructure : | Scarabaeiformia Crowson, 1960 |
|
| International scientific name |
|---|
Melolontha Fabricius , 1775 |
|
Life Cycle of
Melolontha melolonthaContent
Representatives of the genus are characterized by rather large sizes up to 31.5 mm, a convex oblong-oval or wider oval body, black or red-brown in color, mostly with red-brown or yellow-brown elytra, sometimes with a weak greenish tint on the head and pronotum , on the sides of 1–5 abdominal sternites with white triangular spots [2] of small dense hairs, mostly large and sharp, less often small and not sharp. The body is in dense small or small punctures and small adjacent hairs or hairy scales of whitish, yellowish or grayish color, always more or less dense (in specimens recently emerged from the pupa), sometimes very dense and hiding the main background; head and pronotum usually covered with longer protruding hairs, mostly thickened into longitudinal stripes; underwings also often carry scattered longer protruding hairs. The last segment of the maxillary palps is elongated, pointed to the apex, slightly curved, with a depression from above. Antennae 10-segmented with an elongated 3rd segment, in a male with a large strongly curved club, consisting of 7 identical plates.
Scutellum large, semi-oval, smooth, shiny, sometimes with more or less dense punctation and small hairs or scales. Elytra elongated-oval, with 5 narrow rather strong or weak ribs, spaced in thick, fine dashed lines and wrinkles. Pygidium large, oblique, triangular or blunt, elongated in the process. In males, the latter is always better developed, long, in females always shorter.
Chest in thick and long yellow hairs. The abdomen, in addition to the usual small adjacent hairs and scales, is covered with numerous or rare long protruding hairs, sometimes without them. The legs are covered with hairs, longer on the hips. Fore tibia outside with 2, less often with 3 teeth.
May West Khrushchev Larva
May beetle larvae (also known as furrows [3] ) belong to hypognate type larvae, with a thick body bent to the lower side and three pairs of legs. The head is pale yellow, brown-yellow or brown-red, roundish large. 3-5 year generation. Larvae live in the soil and feed on the roots of various herbaceous and woody plants, without a narrow food specialization.
Pupa is always in a crib placed in the soil at a depth of 30-50 cm. Belongs to the type of free pupae. It is similar in shape to an adult beetle, but has short wings, the head is bent under the chest. The color is yellowish. Pupa phase from 2 weeks to a month. The beetle that emerged from the pupa in the fall or at the end of summer remains in the cradle until next spring.
Adults feed on leaves of woody and shrubby vegetation.
Of the known Melolontha species, most are characteristic of the Palaearctic region , and only six are for the Indomalai. Species are common in almost all of Europe , Asia Minor , the Caucasus , most of the Siberian taiga, and in Central Asia , Syria , and northern Iran , India , Japan , China , including Tibet , Indochina, and the Philippine Islands .
- Melolontha aceris Faldermann , 1835
- Melolontha afflicta Ballion , 1870
- Melolontha albida Frivaldszky , 1835
- Melolontha anita Reitter , 1902
- Melolontha argus burmeister 1855
- Melolontha bifurcata ( Brenske , 1896)
- Melolontha chinensis ( Guerin , 1838)
- Melolontha ciliciensis petrovitz
- Melolontha flabellata Sharp , 1876
- Melolontha frater , Arrow 1913
- Melolontha fuscotestacea Kraatz , 1887
- Melolontha guttigera (Sharp, 1876)
- Melolontha hippocastani Fabricius , 1801,
- Melolontha incana Motschulsky , 1853
- Melolontha insulana Burmeister 1939
- Melolontha japonica (Burmeister, 1855)
- Melolontha kraatzi (Reitter 1906)
- Melolontha melolontha ( Linnaeus , 1758)
- Melolontha papposa Illiger , 1803
- Melolontha pectoralis ( Megerle von Mühlfeld , 1812)
- Melolontha rubiginosa
- Melolontha rufocrassa Fairmaire , 1889
- Melolontha satsumaenis Nijma and Kinoshita
- Melolontha virescens (Brenske, 1896)
Larvae and beetles of a number of species are pests of forest, fruit and agricultural crops.
- ↑ Gornostaev G.N. Insects of the USSR. - Moscow: Thought, 1970 .-- 372 p. - (Reference guides to the geographer and traveler).
- ↑ Key to harmful and beneficial insects and ticks of industrial crops in the USSR / V.S. Velikan, V. B. Golub, E. L. Gurieva and others; Comp. L. M. Kopaneva. - L .: Kolos , 1981. - S. 93. - 30,000 copies.
- ↑ Borozdnyak // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
- Johan Christian Fabricius . Systema entomologiae sistens insectorum classes, ordines genera, species, adjectis synonymis, locis, descriptionibus, observationibus . - Flensburg , Lipsia , 1775 .-- P. 31.
- May bug // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
- Medvedev S.I. Scarabaeidae // Key to insects of the European part of the USSR (edited by G. Bei-Bienko.) - Moscow-Leningrad, 1965
- Barton, K. Verfluchte Kreaturen: Lichtenbergs “Proben seltsamen Aberglaubens” und die Logik der Hexen- und Insektenverfolgung im “Malleus Maleficarum”, in Joost, U .; Neumann, A. (eds): Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2004, p. 11ff, Saarbrücken 2004 (SDV Saarländische Druckerei und Verlag), ISBN 3-930843-87-0 . online [1] .
