January 31, 2018: meandering the planted Decorah Community Prairie with J van der Linden looking for insects and sign of insects. Collected various stems, seed heads, and seed including seed of Indigo Bush, Amorpha fruticosa. Under the scope we could see that some of the seed pods had round, what looked like exit holes. There was nothing inside except a partially eaten seed but John immediately said: bruchid. Although adults had already emerged, occasionally there might remain a dead larva, usually too dry to bother photographing, a dead pupa, occasionally in better shape and sometimes even a dead adult. Checked all the pods with holes and some pods that had no holes. Nothing.


Looking in Kingsolver 2004 there are 2 possibilities for this host plant, Acanthoscelides floridae and A. submuticus both of which have been found in Iowa. Kingsolver writes: "...the two species can be distinguished by examining the male genitalia."

February 2, 2018: there is a patch of Indigo Bush in the planted prairie at the farm and I was curious if seeds had been eaten. Yes, some were. Again checking for evidence of the insects, luck was good. One of the pods had a black something right beneath the hole. Gently removing the pod revealed a beetle head and removing the seed exposed an adult.

(From another BG post pertaining to this) G. Keeney says: “I think you can safely move it to A. submuticus (with some caveats) … It's entirely possible that these two species do indeed "cohabitate" … but we can't know for sure until we actually find a definitive A. floridae.”

PPIP