Topic
Wheel bug
About: Wheel bug is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1 citations.
Papers
28 Oct 2021
TL;DR: The wheel bug Arilus gallus Stal (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) is a native American assassin bug that has been recorded preying on insect pests of coffee in Colombia.
Abstract: The wheel bug Arilus gallus Stal (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) is a native American assassin bug that has been recorded preying on insect pests of coffee in Colombia. To provide information to support conservation biological control using this species, life-history parameters for A. gallus were investigated. Arilus gallus was reared under laboratory conditions at Cenicafe, on Galleria mellonella Linnaeus (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) as prey. All immature stages are described and illustrated for the first time. To obtain fecundity parameters, we used 1,818 eggs of the first generation (F1) oviposited from 19 pairs of adults. The mean number of eggs per female was 182.53 ± 7.15, derived from a mean of 1.68 egg masses per female. The egg incubation period was 27.52 ± 1.15 days; egg hatch rate was 80.66%; mean duration from egg to adult was 112.46 ± 5.5 days; and rate of survival to the adult stage was 9.69%. The longevity of adults was 109.66 ± 10.41 days for females and 89.4 ± 8.74 for males. The five immature instars can be distinguished by differences in several anatomical features, including the progressive increase in body size and the color of the abdomen and legs.
2 citations
31 Dec 1969
1 citations
Journal Article•
1 citations
TL;DR: The pre-copulatory behavior of a pair of Arilus gallus Stål observed in a tropical dry forest in Sector Santa Rosa of Area de Conservación Guanacaste, northwestern Costa Rica is described, which is the first description of mating behavior in the genus Arilus.
Abstract: We describe the pre-copulatory behavior of a pair of Arilus gallus Stål (Heteroptera: Reduviidae) observed in a tropical dry forest in Sector Santa Rosa of Area de Conservación Guanacaste, northwestern Costa Rica (10o40'N, 85o 30'W). To our knowledge this is the first description of mating behavior in the genus Arilus other than several notes on the time of year A. cristatus (Linné) mates in the USA (Barber, 1920; Moul, 1945; Hagerty and McPherson, 2000). Species in the genus Arilus Hahn (subfamily Harpactorinae) are commonly known as “wheel bugs” due to their characteristic semicircular crest on the pronotum. Arilus species inhabit the Americas and are generalist predators of insects (Readio, 1927; Hagerty and McPherson, 2000). We concluded that the wheel bugs we observed were A. gallus based on the following criteria in Champion’s key (1897-1901): 1) the ‘wheel’ crest of the pronotum was elevated, unlike A. depressicollis (Stål); 2) the sides of the pronotum were distinctly dilated behind the postero-lateral angles and had only short spines at the base, unlike A. cristatus; 3) the abdomen margins (connexivae) were not very sinuate, unlike A. cristatus; and 4) parts of the legs, antennae, and head were rust-colored, unlike A. cristatus. Pictures of the A. gallus holotype held at the Swedish Museum of Natural History are available online for comparison (www2.nrm.se/en/het_nrm/ g/arilus_gallus.html). In Champion’s species description (1897-1901) A. gallus pronotal crests have 9-11 tubercles, whereas the insects we observed had 8 tubercles. We are confident our identification is accurate despite the tubercle number discrepancy based on the aforementioned criteria and species range match: Arilus gallus inhabits the Pacific slope of southern Central America and parts of northern South America (Champion, 1897-1901; Maldonado Capriles, 1990). Although A. gallus specimens collected from the Pacific slope of Costa Rica are held in the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad of Costa Rica (accessed through GBIF Data Portal, www.gbif.net, 2009-06-08), ours appears to be the first published record of this species in Costa Rica. We observed the pair of A. gallus on February 19, 2008, in the middle of the six month dry season that is characterized in this region by desiccation stress and low abundance of insect prey (Janzen, 1987). We saw the male at 11:30 h on a 304 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 1 |
| 2010 | 1 |
| 1998 | 1 |
| 1969 | 1 |