2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The large pear elephant lives mainly in the Russian forest-steppe and steppe. In addition to pears, it often damages apple trees with plums, as well as hawthorn plantings and apricots with cherries. These voracious insects are characterized by a two-year generation and a double wintering: the first winter they are in the larval stage, and the second, already being bugs. Malicious bugs damage flowers, leaves and buds, as well as fruits and green shoots. And the food of the larvae is mainly the pulp of fruits and seeds. The first carrion carrion inhabited by them can be found closer to the beginning of June, and its mass appearance falls on the end of June - the first half of July
Meet the pest
The large pear elephant is a malignant bug ranging in size from 7 to 10 mm, painted in rich black and raspberry tones with a slight greenish tint. The apices of the rostrum and tarsi with antennae, which are thickened at the tips, are dark brown in these pests, and the eyes are slightly convex. Rostrum runs parallel with longitudinal thin carina and disappears closer to apices. The scutes of large pear elephants are rather small and quadrangular. The length of the elytra, equipped with large specks and grooves, is one and a half times the width of the pests' shoulders, and their entire body is covered with light sparse hairs.
White eggs of gluttonous parasites are characterized by an oval shape and reach sizes from 1 to 1, 2 mm. White, arcuate curved larvae, growing in length up to 10 - 12 mm, are distinguished by a slight yellowish tinge and brownish-brown chairmen. And their dorsal sides along the edges of the segments are covered with light sparse hairs. The size of the pupae ranges from 9 to 14 mm. All of them are white, covered with sparse hairs and endowed with a pair of brownish spines at the tips of the abdomen.
Both larvae and harmful beetles overwinter in the soil. As soon as the budding begins in the spring, the bugs get out of the soil and immediately begin additional nutrition. Their average life span is approximately two to two and a half months.
Around the end of May, large pear elephants begin to mate and lay eggs. Females gnaw out rather deep pits in pear fruits, on the bottoms of which one egg is placed, covering them with stubs of the peel of the fruit. Then they eat out rather sinuous circular grooves on the surfaces of the fruit around the egg chambers and gnaw the stalks. As a result of such activity of females, the fruits wither and begin to fall off ahead of schedule. The total fertility of females reaches about a hundred eggs.
After eight to eleven days, the larvae revive, feeding for thirty to forty days inside the fruit. When their development is over, they leave the fruits and move into the soil - there, at a depth of ten to fifteen centimeters, they build funny earthen cradles. In such cradles, parasites stay until next fall. Approximately in August-September, larvae pupate, and after a while bugs appear, remaining in the cradles until the end of spring.
Large pear elephants are most widely distributed in the European part of Russia (in the forest-steppe and steppe zones), in Central Asia, Crimea, Kazakhstan and the Caucasus. In addition, these pests can be found in Turkey, Iran and in several southern and central regions of Europe.
How to fight
The carrion must be constantly collected and immediately destroyed. At the stage of mass migration of harmful larvae, thorough tillage will not interfere. A similar treatment is also carried out in the fall, at the stage of pupation of pests.
If eight or more bugs are found on each tree, four days later, a maximum of six after the end of flowering, they begin spraying with suitable insecticides.
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