Common spruce sapling buck
| Common spruce sapling buck | ||||||||||||
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Common spruce sapling buck ( Tetropium castaneum ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Tetropium castaneum | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The common spruce beetle ( Tetropium castaneum , syn .: Tetropium luridum Severin, 1889 ), also called destructive spruce buck or ambiguously, but not incorrectly, also simply called spruce buck , is a longhorn beetle . The common spruce sapling beetle is one of the most important coniferous wood pests among the longhorn beetles , along with the brown spruce buck ( Tetropium fuscum ). However, only weak stocks that have been damaged by other diseases such as drought, air pollution, fungi or other insects are usually infested.
features
The beetles reach a body length of 9 to 18 millimeters and have a black colored body, with the exception of the antennae and legs , which are more or less brown to brown-red in color towards the tip, and the wings , which are brown. The wings are often long and densely hairy and have easily recognizable, fine longitudinal ribs. The pronotum is glossy black and is faintly dotted when viewed at 10x magnification. A deep longitudinal furrow runs between the humps at the antennae on the head of the animals. In melanistic specimens, either the legs and antennae are completely black or the wings are also colored in this color. The edge of the pronotum, like the hips (coxae), the pleuras , the front edge of the prothorax and a spot on the pronotum in front of the black shield can be brown to red-brown in color.
Similar species
- Brown spruce goat ( Tetropium fuscum ) (Fabricius, 1787); The pronotum of this species is dull and dotted more densely.
- Larch buck ( Tetropium gabrieli ) Weise, 1905; The pronotum is very hairy and the head has no longitudinal furrow.
Occurrence
The common spruce sapling buck occurs in almost the entire Palearctic and is only absent in the far north and on the British Isles and on the French Atlantic coast. It is particularly common on the Balkan Peninsula and northern Italy . It occurs in coniferous forests , especially in spruce , but also in pine forests from the plains to the mountains. The species flies from May to July, in optimal years also from April to August.
Way of life
On warm days, the beetles fly to freshly felled as well as living trees to mate. The larvae develop in particular in the wood of spruce, and less often in that of pine. They avoid old dead wood and prefer to develop on living or freshly felled trees between 60 and 100 years old in dry locations. One generation is formed every year.
development
The females lay about 100 eggs either between cracks in the bark or on the lower part of injured trunks. After about two weeks, the larvae hatch and drill their way between the bark and sapwood and fill their irregularly winding feeding tunnels with drill dust. Due to the initial consumption of bark and wood, this does not have a uniform color. Gradually, the larvae penetrate deeper into the wood until, in autumn, when they are fully grown and 15 to 25 millimeters long, they eat a vertical passage that kinks at the bottom like a hook. At the end of this relatively short corridor, two to four centimeters deep in the wood, the doll's cradle is placed, in which the animals pupate over the winter. In spring, the adults hatch from the host tree and leave an oval loophole. The main enemy of the larvae are woodpeckers .
literature
- Adolf Brauns: Pocket Book of Forest Insects Volume 1. (3rd edition, edited); Gustav Fischer Verlag Stuttgart, ISBN 3-437-30228-0
- Karl Wilhelm Harde, Frantisek Severa and Edwin Möhn: The Kosmos Käferführer: The Central European Beetles. Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH & Co KG, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-440-06959-1 .
- Jiři Zahradnik, Irmgard Jung, Dieter Jung et al .: Beetles of Central and Northwestern Europe. Parey, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-490-27118-1 .
Web links
- Tetropium castaneum Fichtenbock ( Memento from July 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive )