Wild plum weevil - Coccotorus scutellaris Trout Run Trail, Winneshiek County, Iowa, USA August 29, 2017
This critter alone makes me want to do more weevil rearings. What a charmer.
I was biking along, mighty hungry, hey look, a few wild plums still on that tree! Snack time. Except that as I approached (now on foot) I realized each fruit had a single similar-sized hole in it. Hmmm... I tore into a few and found that each contained a tunnel that led from a hollow in the pit of the fruit straight to the skin, not meandering through the flesh at all. In fact the flesh was intact and tasty except for the tunnel. Clearly this was a creature interested in the pit of the fruit, not the sweet stuff surrounding it.
One of the fruits I examined had a BIG weevil staring out of the tunnel so I collected that fruit and a few others, shown here.
Images of this individual: tag all Contributed by John van der Linden on 12 September, 2017 - 3:09pm Last updated 21 January, 2018 - 10:19am |