94: BULLETIN 190, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



SYNANTHEDON PICTIPES (Grote and Robinson) 



Plate 23, Figures 138, 139 



Aegcria pictipes Grote and Robinson, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc, vol. 2, p. 182, pi. 2, 



fig. 64, 1868. 

 Acgeria inusitata Hy. Edwards, Papilio, vol. 1, p. 201, 1881. 

 Synanthedon pictipes McDunnough, Check list of the Lepidoptera of Canada and the 



United States of America, pt. 2, No. 8720, 1939. 



Male. — Antennae long, black, scarcely dilated toward tips ; pectinations 

 fine. Palpi beneath pale yellow, above black. Head, thorax, abdomen, 

 and legs black, with metallic reflections more often coppery than blue. 

 Head sprinkled with pale-yellow scales at the base. Collar black above, 

 pale yellow at the sides. Thorax with yellowish borders to the tegulae 

 and a yellowish spot at the side beneath and before the base of the 

 wing. Wings hyaline, sometimes stained yellowish. Forewing with 

 costa, transverse mark, and outer margins very narrowly scaled with 

 black. Fringes short, brown-black, Hindwing wholly pellucid, with 

 only a very narrow terminal border continued to the base. Wings be- 

 neath with inner and costal margins and discal mark scaled and edged 

 pale yellow. Tibiae with two pale yellow or whitish tufts at the spurs. 

 Tarsi banded with whitish at the joints. Abdomen with the second seg- 

 ment bordered with whitish above and beneath and the fourth segment 

 whitish beneath only (color markings on abdominal segments of imperfect 

 or old specimens often obscured) ; anal tuft distinctly hastate, sparsely 

 edged with whitish at the sides. 



Female. — Very similar to the male. Antennae simple, anal tuft long, 

 narrow, not hastate. 



Expanse: Male 18 to 23 mm., female 20 to 25 mm. 



Distribution. — Chiefly eastern half of Canada and the United States 

 to the Mississippi and eastern Texas. Rocky Mountain and Pacific 

 coast records doubtful. 



Type. — Lost. Type of Aegeria inusitata, female, in the American 

 Museum of Natural History. 



Remarks. — Specimens of the two sexes of pictipes are very similar 

 and bear a striking resemblance to the male of Sanninoidea exitiosa, 

 except for their smaller size. Swellings and distortions caused by the 

 black-knot fungus on branches of wild black cherry often are inhabited 

 by the larvae. v9. pictipes is usually known as the "lesser peach borer," 

 while exitiosa is called the "peachtree borer." As a pest of peach trees 

 and other kinds of stone fruits under cultivation, pictipes is far less im- 

 portant than exitiosa. 



Wild cherry and wild plum are the principal native food plants. The 

 species has been reported from Juneberry, Amelanchier canadensis, prob- 

 ably erroneously, as my specimens reared from this plant turned out 

 to be Thamnosphecia pyri. The chestnut bark borer, often confused 



