Variole Paropsine Beetle - Paropsis variolosa
Subfamily Chrysomelinae, FAMILY CHRYSOMELIDAE
This page contains information and pictures about Variole Paropsine Beetles that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Body length 12mm
- Those beetle adults and larvae feed on Eucalyptus tree leaves. They are beautiful golden brown colour with yellow dots, round convex in shape.
- We found them easily in bush on the young Eucalyptus tree. Usually they hide or feed under the leaves.
- Both adult and larval stages feed on eucalypt leaves. They feed on a wide range of eucalypts.
- Leaf beetles pass winter as adults under bark or amongst leaf litter. In spring when the trees are producing fresh new growth, the beetles become active. They mate and lay eggs on host plants.
Eggs and 1st instars
- The eggs are laid on new growth on the terminal shoots. The eggs hatched and the larvae feed on the new Eucalypt leave in group.
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- Eggs on leaf, length 2mm 1st instars
- On mid-summer, we found some insect eggs attached on a gum leave. We believed they were the Eucalyptus Leaf Beetle eggs. We brought them home. After a few days later, small larvae come out from those eggs. The larvae look exactly the same as the larger larvae except much smaller. The first thing they did after hatching were eating their egg-cases. Look carefully at those eggs in the 1st picture above, we can see the larvae was developing inside.
2nd instars
- The larvae are brown in colour with white dots on body.
3rd instars
- Length 8mm
- Early instars feed in group. As the larvae grow they may stay in a group or feed individually. Leaves are often chewed down to the central vein of leaves.
- Their heads and tails are black in colour. They have there pairs of thoracic legs but no abdominal legs.
Last instars
Pupa
- Pupae are rarely seen because the larvae drop from tree and pupate in the litter and soil below the tree.
- Larvae Pupa, length 10mm Just hatched from pupa
- There are four larval instars. When larvae are mature, they drop to the ground and pupate. In the about picture, the creamy-yellow ones are the pupa. The dark colour ones are the last instars about to moult last time to turn into pupa. They took about three weeks time to turn into adults. The second pictures shows a leaf beetle just turn into an adult.
The food plants
- Both adult and larval stages feed on eucalypt leaves. They feed on a wide range of Eucalyptus and Angophora. They are common on eucalypt but seldom in damaging level.
- Angophora sp., family Myrtaceae
- Reference:
- 1. Paropsis variolosa - PaDIL, Pest and Diseases Image Library, 2007.
- 2. Paropsis variolosa (Marsham, 1808) - Australian Biological Resources Study, Department of the Environment and Heritage, Australia 2005.
- 3. Leaf
beetles (Paropsines) - S. A. Lawson and J. King, Department of Primary
Industries and Fisheries, Queensland, 2006.
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