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Keywords

Twig Girdler, Oncideres cingulata, mockernut hickory, oviposition, Cerambycidae

Abstract

The Twig Girdler (Cerambycidae: Oncideres cingulata) is a long-horned beetle that girdles stems of certain species of trees to prepare a habitat for its offspring. The stems eventually die, break, and fall from the tree, but the beetle usually had already laid its eggs within the stems. Eggs are laid singly, almost always at growth rings or leaf bases. Because the space for the young to develop is finite, laying too many eggs could cause reproductive failure and too few eggs would be suboptimal. We hypothesized that the female laying eggs should be able to evaluate the stem and lay a number of eggs appropriate to the available habitat within the stem. We gathered twigs girdled from Mockernut Hickory (Carya tomentosa) in October and November over 3 years to count the number and distribution of eggs oviposited. Of those twigs, 12 were blown down by the wind with the female still clinging to the stem, and we observed their behavior as they continued to oviposit. It appeared that females used their legs as calipers to measure the diameter of the stem and laid more eggs at wider locations of the stem.

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