(E)-9-Dodecenyl acetate (E9-12:OAc) and (Z)-9-dodecenyl acetate (Z9-12:OAc) are major components of the sex pheromone of the cherry bark tortrix (CBT), Enarmonia formosana (Scopoli), in British Columbia. The compounds were identified in extracts of female pheromone glands by coupled gas chromatographic – electroantennographic detection (GC–EAD) and coupled GC – mass spectrometry. In field experiments, traps baited with E9-12:OAc or Z9-12:OAc singly were unattractive to male CBT, but in combination at ratios of 50:50 or 40:60 captured numerous males. Increasing quantities of this two-component pheromone blend resulted in increasing captures of male CBT. This binary blend at a 10-mg dose caught more CBT males that did caged virgin CBT females. Eight other EAD-active acetates identified in extracts of pheromone glands failed to enhance attractiveness of the pheromone blend. These compounds may serve to reduce cross-attraction of heterospecific male moths or may play a role in courtship behaviour. Formulations of synthetic pheromone are being evaluated for management of the CBT using mass trapping or disorientation of male CBT moths.

We evaluated the efficacy of fipronil baits in suppressing or eliminating field colonies of Microtermes mycophagus (Desneux) (Blattodea: Termitidae) an important subterranean termite pest in Pakistan. We tested two doses (10 and 30 ppm) of fipronil in toilet paper baits, chosen from laboratory repellency tests. We monitored four colonies for foraging activity for one month before baiting, and mapped foraging territories with termites marked with Nile Blue A and agonistic tests. Before the fipronil baits were installed there were averages of 782–1938 workers and soldiers per bait station in the four colonies. After baiting, the colonies were eliminated as there were no workers per bait station, whereas the control colony had an average of 1142 workers per bait station. The three possibly eliminated colonies consumed around 47 mg of fipronil formulation (4.7 mg active ingredient) in 45–90 days. Our results suggest that baits containing fipronil could provide an economical and feasible alternative for the management of M. mycophagus in structures and buildings in Pakistan.

Leptocera (Thoracochaeta Duda), a subgenus of sphaerocerid flies associated with marine supralittoral habitats, is revised for the Nearctic Region. Keys are provided for separation of the nine Nearctic species. L. (T.) teskeyi, L. (T.) flaminuta, L. (T.) calminuta, and L. (T.) bajaminuta are described as new and L. (T.) zosterae is recorded from the Nearctic for the first time. The larvae of three species (zosterae, seticosta, and brachystoma) are described.

In the course of the preparation of a paper on the Dytiscidae of Minnesora and Manitoba several new species were discovered. As this paper, though finished, cannot be published for some time, it is felt wise to make these species known and the opportunity to add a few others is taken.

Aptesis basizona (Grav.), a hymenopterous parasite of Diprion pini (L.), D. similis (Htg.), Neodiprion sertifer (Geoff.), and other Diprionidae in Europe, was Propagated for several years at Belleville, Ont., for release in biological control programs (Green, 1938), and for use as an experimental insect. It was observed that oviposition was reduced by lack of food and by change of food from raisins to a mixture of sugars and ager (Finlayson and Green, 1940). Fecundity of the females was greater when adults were fed on fresh, unpasteurized honey than on raisins (Finlayson and Finlayson, 1957). Both raisins and honey contain protein, in the proportion of about 8:1 (Anon., l945), so that it is unlikely to be a factor in the difference. As sugar content of raisins is about 73 per cent (Sun Maid Raisin Growers of California, in litt.) and of honey about 79 per cent (Watt and Merrill, 1950), it appeared that mineral trace elements or vitamins in the food might be responsible for the difference in the oviposition. Both raisins and honey contain potassium, chlorine, sulphur, calcium, phosphorus, sodium, magnesium, silica, iron, manganese, and copper, but the latter two are minor elements in raisins (Sun Maid Raisin Growers of California, in litt.; Apiculture Section, Entomology Research Institute, Ottawa, in litt.).

During the first week of April, 1937, while on a collecting trip in central Florida, the writer found a larva of a notodont on oak; at the time of collecting the larva was referred to Symmerista with some doubt as it was unlike the northern specimens, being darker in color and with less contrast in pattern. This larva pupated at Ithaca and the moth, a normal albifrons female, emerged the end of May. Nothing more was thought of the matter until the writer began a general survey of the genitalia of the Notodontidae, preparing a series of genitalic slides of each American species. It was after discovering that the northeastern species of Symmerista was easily and readily divisble into three species on both male and female genitalia that the larva was thought to have some significance.

Oria sanguinea, 9, fig. 613–614.

“Georgia.” This species has been generally recognized. Oria is used for maculosa in the Verzeichniss, from which sanguinea is distinct structurally. I have referred the latter as the type of Porrima in the Chheck List, No. 664. The doubtful reference there to Fitch's volupia must be struck out.

During recent field studies of the behaviour and activiw of larvae in colonies of M. americanum and H. textor, it was noticed that nymphs and adults ofPodisus placidus (Uhler) and of P. modestus (Dallas) frequently visited colonies of the eastern tent caterpillar and occasionally those of the spotless fall webworm. Although small larvae, particularly those of the tent caterpillar, fell prey to both nymphs and adults, larvae of the fifth and sixth instars occasionally exhibited special reactions.

A laboratory study of the fecundity, longevity, and intrinsic natural rate of increase of Epidinocarsis lopezi (De Santis) (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae) was performed at 26 °C, the average temperature observed in the Congo during pullulation of its host Phenacoccus manihoti Mat.-Ferr. (Homoptera: Pseudococcidae). With 30 mealybugs per female per day, the parasitoid lives for an average of 41.4 days and lays 558.5 eggs. The net reproduction rate (R0) was calculated to be 269.9 females per female per generation, the average duration of a generation (T) was 33.9 days, and the intrinsic natural rate of increase of the parasitoid (rm) was 0.213. The fecundity observed in E. lopezi in this study was much higher than the figures previously reported. The rm of the parasitoid appeared to be higher than that determined by other authors for the mealybug. The limits of such a comparison are discussed.

Studies of the goldenrod gall caused by Eurosta solidaginis Fitch have been made by various authors who reared insects from the galls in North America, e.g. Hughes (1934), Milne (1940) and Ping (1915). Snyder (1898) described the emergence of an adult fly from a gall in Illinois. In Canada, insects have been reared from galls collected in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories by Brodie (1892), in Quebec by Fyles (1894) and in Ontario by Harrington (1895). An opportunity has been taken recently to examine specimens reared by Dr. G. Beall from galls collected at Chatham, Ontario in 1930 and to rear insects from galls in the vicinity of London, Ontario.

Previous work (11) showed that two species of grasshoppers, Melanoplus bivittatus (Say) and Camnula pellucida (Scudd.), normally prefer a dry atmosphere. The present paper deals with the effects of starvation and of moulting on the humidity reactions of these species.

Materials and Methods

To test the effect of starvation on humidity reactions, adults of the two species from laboratory-reared cultures were used. Each adult was placed in a separate, cylindrical, plastic-screen cage, which mas eight inches long, two inches in diameter, and corked at both ends, The caged insects, without food or water, were placed for four or five days, or until death, in racks in a rearing room maintained at 30 ± 0.5°C. and 46 ± 1 per cent relative humidity. At intervals triplicated samples of ten adults, of one species and sex, were removed from the cages to test their reactions to alternative humidities of 0 and 90 per cent in an olfactometer (11).

Experiments were done in an attempt to ascertain the significance of the mandibular glands of nurse bees in female caste differentiation. Groups of 30 or 75, 10-day-old nurse bees, with their mandibular glands removed, were caged in the laboratory. Each group was provided with female larvae in plastic queen cell cups. The treated nurse bees were able to rear a few pupae, from these larvae, which were classified as queenlike intermediates while the untreated nurse bees reared pupae or adults which were classified as queens or queenlike intermediates.

This species, described from a single rather imperfect male specimen, was found very abundantly in certain sections of the Knowlton, Que. region in 1929 and 1930, the adults swarming at dusk and mating on warm evenings in the latter half of June. The very striking nymph was also secured in the small brooks of the Bolton Pass section, four or five miles south of Knowlton. The following notes on the species are offered to supplement the original description.

Nine species of parasites and one hyperparasite were reared from a complex of the brace spanworm, Operophtera bruceata (Hulst), and the European winter moth, O. brumata (L.), collected in the Victoria area of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in 1976 and 1977. Parasitism of the host complex was about 1.5%, mainly due to an unnamed species of Phobocampe (Ichneumonidae). All species of parasites taken in British Columbia on the two hosts have congeneric counterparts on O. brumata in Europe as listed by Wylie (1961); thus the release of exotic species in addition to the two already released in British Columbia may not enhance the biological control of O. brumata. Descriptions and illustrations of cephalic structures of final-instar larvae of the parasites and a key for their separation are given.

The genus Hystrichopsylla is Holarctic in distribution; its species include the largest known fleas. Only a few of the species exhibit marked host preferences. H. talpae (Curtis), the type of the genus, occurs through much of Europe and Asia, where the favoured hosts are insectivores and small rodents. It differs from all other known species chiefly in the presence of true combs of long, pigmented spines on abdominal terga II to IV (Fig. 1). Because of the differences, Ioff and Scalon (1950, in Ioff and Scalon et al., p. 273) proposed the subgenus Hystroceras (type, H. satunini Wagn.) to contain a group of Palaearctic species (satunini Wagn., microti Scalon, and nicolai Scalon) that have the abdominal combs reduced to series of apical spinelets (Fig. 2); this taxon would include all the known Nearctic species of Hystrichopsylla. Ioff and Scalon considered Typhloceras Wagn., known only from the Palaearctic region, a third subgenus, but this interpretation will probably not be generally followed.

The Forest Insect Survey at the Forest Biology Laboratory, Winnipeg, has been compiling records for a number of years on the percentage of cocoons of the larch sawfly, Pristiphora erichsonii (Htg.), parasitized by the tachinid Bessa harveyi Tnsd. Sawfly cocoons were collected each fall from the soil in infested stands, and those containing living larvae were dissected to determine the percentage of parasitism by B. harveyi. These estimates have been used to provide an index of parasitism (Lejeune and Hildahl, 1954), but are of limited value for a number of reasons: (1) estimates can be expressed only as percentage of sound cocoons parasitized; (2) total parasitism cannot be estimated because a portion of the parasites emerge from the cocoons before collection; and (3) estimates of parasitism may not be representative of the stand because there is a tendency to collect cocoons where they are easiest to find; hence all the cocoons in a collection may be from one or two small areas. If the proportion of cocoons containing B. harveyi varies within a stand such collections may give unreliable estimates of parasitism.

Phasgonophora sulcata Westwood (Hymenoptera: Chalcididae) is a North American parasitoid now using Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) as a novel host, and may prove useful in biocontrol. Unfortunately, information is lacking regarding mating and the presence of pheromones, which may be important when attempting to exploit this parasitoid within a management context. Herein we used olfactometer assays and behavioural observations to determine the courtship and mating sequences of P. sulcata. A significantly higher proportion of males oriented towards females over the control arm containing filtered air in an olfactometer regardless of the age classes of females or males examined. We also observed four pre-copulatory behaviours that were consistent in all mating pairs. Our results indicate that courtship may be mediated by male perception of female-produced pheromones. Understanding the courtship sequence may be useful in rearing laboratory populations, while the putative pheromones may be useful in detection and retention of P. sulcata populations.

This family is very sharply separated from the Selandriidœ, Dineuridœ and the Tenthredinidœ by having only one marginal cell in the front wings, while from the Hylotomidœ, Lophyridœ, Perreyiidœ and the Pterygophoridœ which also have only one marginal cell, it is readily distinguished by pteropterological and antennal characters, and especially by the basal nervure in front wings uniting with the subcostal vein far from the origin of the cubitus.