16 
PEELTMINAKY KEPOET ON ALFALFA WEEVIL. 
The beetles pass the winter hidden away among matted grass or 
other similar vegetation, including alfalfa, and, indeed, among most 
kinds of rubbish anywhere, wherever they will be protected from the 
weather. The beetles have also been found in early spring under 
clods and about the crowns of alfalfa plants where the ground had 
been roughly cultivated the previous autumn. The overgrown mar- 
gins of fields and irrigation canals and ditches afford excellent places 
for hibernation, some of which are shown in Plate II, figures 1, 2, 
and 3. 
With the first warm weather in spring the beetles become active 
and diffuse themselves over the alfalfa fields, feeding upon any living 
part of the plants that 
have escaped the win- 
ter or, as soon as it 
commences to push 
forth, on the fresh 
growth, both leaf and 
stem. During some 
years the beetles are 
abroad in the fields in 
Utah early in March; 
in other and colder 
springs it may be April 
before they bestir 
themselves. Latitude 
and elevation, with 
the consequent modi- 
fications of tempera- 
ture, will have much 
to do in deciding the 
time of emergence 
from winter quarters 
Fig. 2.— The clover-leaf weevil (i??/pera punctata): a, Egg; b,b,b,b, inspring. TllCV also to 
larvse feeding; /,cocoon; /, lieetle; k, same, dorsal view. (b,f, i. Natural 
size; fc, enlarged; a, greatly enlarged.) (From Riley.) 
some extent liibernate 
in the alfalfa fields. 
As soon as the beetles have spread from their winter quarters out 
over the fields they pair, and the females are ready to deposit their 
eggs (figs. 3, 4). As a matter of fact, however, pairing has been 
observed in the fall, and females taken while liibernating are ob- 
served to lay 75 per cent of fertile eggs. According to the notes of 
Mr. Fiske, made in Italy, they may place their eggs in the old, dead, 
overwintered stems or even in the dead stems of plants other than 
those of alfalfa, but in Utah the beetles refused to oviposit in dead 
stems in the laboratory cages. According to Dr. Giovanni Martelli/ 
at Portici in 1909 the first adults which he obtained appeared toward 
1 First contribution to the biology of Phytonomus variabilis Herbft. BoUettino del Laboratoria di Zoo- 
logia Generale e Agraria della R. Scuola Superiore d'Agricoltura in Portici, vol. 5, March, 1911, 
