Common asparagus chicken
| Common asparagus chicken | ||||||||||||
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Common asparagus chicken ( Crioceris asparagi ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Crioceris asparagi | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The common asparagus ( Crioceris asparagi ) is a beetle from the family of leaf beetles (Chrysomelidae).
features
The beetles are 5 to 6.5 millimeters long. They have a blue-black head and a red pronotum . The wings are very variable in their color. The coloration includes a black, wide suture of the wing cover , which flows together in three places with transverse bands and a broad border around the wing cover that is reddish. The animals have three white to yellowish spots between the edge and the black areas.
Occurrence
They occur in southern and central Europe to Denmark and southern Sweden and partly in Great Britain , but also in North America and Asia , where they were introduced. They fly from April to September and are not uncommon.
Way of life
Both the beetles and the larvae live on wild and cultivated asparagus plants and feed on their leaves and the shoot, thereby weakening young plants in particular. The adults can create a chirping noise by rubbing chitin ridges on the abdomen and the wing covers. The animals mate in early summer. The females lay about 100 of their 1.6 millimeter long gray-green to black colored eggs vertically on the stalks of the asparagus plants from May. The up to 8 millimeters long, olive-green larvae pupate in the soil after they have developed. The beetles hatch in autumn and overwinter under leaves, stones, bark or in the stalks of the asparagus plants. Second generation larvae can appear from August to September.
swell
literature
- Harde, Severa: Der Kosmos Käferführer, The Central European Beetles. Kosmos-Verlag, 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
