Hickory Shoot Curculio – Conotrachelus aratus

Hickory Shoot Curculio (Conotrachelus Aratus)

Latin Name: Conotrachelus Aratus

Common Name: Hickory Shoot Curculio

Appearance:

• The larva is legless, somewhat curved or crescent-shaped, and is around 6.0 mm in length and 1.5 mm wide. At first, the pupa is delicate and white, but it darkens with time.
• The larva is yellowish-white in color, with a brown head and black teeth and a sprinkling of small but visible petioles.
• The adult is a weevil-like beetle with a short, robust snout roughly one-third the length of the body or about the same length as the head and thorax combined. With an indistinct wide band of golden pubescence behind the center of the elytra and a short line of the same color on each side of the thorax, the hue is dull grey to reddish-brown.

Territory:

The hickory shoot curculio is an insect well distributed in the USA

Damage caused by White Pine Weevil:

Darkened holes around the bases of many shoots were the source of the damage. Shoot tips and leaves that have been impacted generally become yellow or brown and wither on the tree or fall away. Heavily tunnelled shoots frequently snap and fall without becoming yellow and wilting. In late summer and fall, Fresh emerging adults feed puncture wounds along the stalk, and leaf petioles are caused by minimal late-season damage.

Life history and Habits:

Adults spend the winter in leaf litter and debris-filled brushy regions near host trees. They emerge in the spring (about mid-April) and travel to fragile, quickly developing shoots to feed and lay their eggs. Larvae will hatch and immediately begin burrowing into nodes, forming a tunnel. When the hickory branch curculio larva has finished developing, it emerges from the tunnel and falls to the ground, where it pupates for two to three weeks. From August to September, the adult weevil emerges, eats for a short time, and then seeks a well-sheltered location to spend the winter. This bug only has one generation per year.