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(The Pive-spinad Engraver Beetle.) 

 Hosts - Sugar and yellow pine. 



With the exception of the Bendroctonus, this is 

 probably the most destructive of the beetles "rilling coni- 

 fers in California. Thousands of trees in our forests be- 

 come spike and then flat -topped as a result of its depreda- 

 tions. When mature the "beetle is black and shining, having 

 an abbreviated Etppearanee, as though the wings were cut off 

 posteriorly. This appearance is common to all Ips. The adult 

 has 5 spines en the posterior part of the wing cover, the mid- 

 dle spine being the nost prominent. The egg galleries are 

 grooved in the sap^ood and are stellate or star shuppd, radiat- 

 ing from a small chamber directly under the entrance hole. 

 The eggs are c'e-cfitod in noto'rep nn the margins of the gal- 

 lery. The larval galleries radiate in all directions in the 

 cambium thus girdling the tops of mature trees and the stems 

 of poles and saplings. It breeds in freshly cut tops and 

 limbs, or in slash caused by wind or snowbreak, and then often 

 becoming epidemic in standing jroung growth. It is also found 

 breeding in logs and pices of shattered trunks left in the 

 woods. Another species closely resembling it is often found 

 in the same locality. This is known as ips or^cni. It is 

 not quite so black and averages slightly smaller. Pitch 

 tubes formed by Ips confusus and other species of ips have a 



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