15 



TAPEKS. 



Some Additional Notes on Brnchidae and Their Parasites in 

 the Hawaiian Islands. 



BY JOHX COLBURX BKl DWELL. 



1. Brucius sallaei, Shaup. A.\■()TIlEl^ XEw-Forxi.i 

 Immigkaxt. 



Acacia favneslmm is one of the iinniigrant legiiunuous 

 plants which has found the Hawaiian climate and soils pecu- 

 liarlv well adapted to its needs and is now very widely distrib- 

 uted in the dryer lowlands and lower hills to an elevation of 

 al)out five or six hundred feet. It is a troublesome spiny shrub 

 which since the time Dr. Hillebrand wrote his account has 

 occupied large areas of pasture lands. In the Flora he speaks 

 of it as having occupied areas in the vicinity of the Pearl 

 River Inlet. Its spread is not easy to account for, since the 

 seeds, as large as small peas, do not appear to have any par- 

 ticular means of distribution. It seeds very freely but is at- 

 tacked by several species of insects which live in the pods and 

 at least three of these are of considerable importance in de- 

 stroying the seeds. Cr-yptophlehia illepida attacks the pods 

 before the seeds harden and later enters and devours a very 

 large part of the ripening seeds, each larva destroying several 

 seeds Myeloid reratoniae feeds in the pods in much the same 

 way. Several other moths and three or four species of beetles 

 feed in the pods which have been injured in this manner but 

 a])parently play no part in the destruction of the seeds. The 

 Bruchid Caryoborus gonagra enters the pods from eggs laid on 

 the surface and each larva may destroy one or more seeds. 

 Tiiese beneficial attacks have been familiar to all Ilav.aiian 

 entomologists. Having occasion on ^lay -30, 1918, to examine 

 some of these pods to secure material for the study of Caryo- 

 botnis gonagra,- I was interested to find the pods containing 

 another Bruchid closely resembling Bruchus prosopis in consid- 

 erable nundiers in the Punchbowl district of Honolulu. 



Proc. Haw. Ent. Soc, IV, Xo. i, June, 1919. 



