Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 May 2020 | 12(8): 15927–15931

 

ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) 

doi: https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5033.12.8.15927-15931

#5033 | Received 27 April 2019 | Final received 14 February 2020 | Finally accepted 04 May 2020

 

 

Occurrence of Fulgoraecia (= Epiricania) melanoleuca (Lepidoptera: Epipyropidae) as a parasitoid of sugarcane lophopid planthopper Pyrilla perpusilla in Tamil Nadu (India) with brief notes on its life stages

 

H. Sankararaman 1 , G. Naveenadevi 2 & S. Manickavasagam 3

 

1,2,3 Parasitoid Taxonomy and Biocontrol laboratory, Department of Entomology, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu 608002, India.

1 sankararaman05@gmail.com (corresponding author), 2 nethranavi96@gmail.com, 3 drmanicks2003@yahoo.co.in

 

 

 

Editor: George Mathew, (Ex) Head, Forest Health Division, Kerala Forest Research Institute, Peechi, India.          Date of publication: 26 May 2020 (online & print)

 

Citation: Sankararaman, H., G. Naveenadevi & S. Manickavasagam (2020). Occurrence of Fulgoraecia (= Epiricania) melanoleuca (Lepidoptera: Epipyropidae) as a parasitoid of sugarcane lophopid planthopper Pyrilla perpusilla in Tamil Nadu (India) with brief notes on its life stages.  Journal of Threatened Taxa 12(8): 15927–15931. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5033.12.8.15927-15931

 

Copyright: © Sankararaman et al. 2020. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publication.

 

Funding: DST PURSE II, Annamalai University.

 

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

 

Acknowledgements: The authors are thankful to Dr. M. Ayyamperumal, Central Integrated Pest Management Centre, Trichy and PG students 2018-19 for the help rendered in collection.  The partial financial aid of Government of India, DST PURSE PHASE II (2018-2019) through Annamalai University is gratefully acknowledged.

 

 

 

Abstract: Seasonal incidence of sugarcane planthopper Pyrilla perpusilla Walker (Hemiptera: Lophopidae) and its natural enemies was investigated at Cuddalore District, Tamil Nadu during 2018.  In this study, Fulgoraecia melanoleuca, a parasitoid of sugarcane planthopper Pyrilla perpusilla was observed in large numbers in the field.  Brief notes on its biology, life stages, and extent of parasitism on the host were studied.  Per cent parasitization in nymph and adult was 47.54 and 45.09, respectively, during the month of August.  High resolution images of all life stages are provided to help in identification.

 

Keywords: Biology, Fulgoraecia melanoleuca, life stages, natural occurrence, Pyrilla perpusilla.

 

 

 

Epipyropidae is a small family of ectoparasitic insects belonging to the order Lepidoptera.  Their larvae are parasitic on Auchenorrhyncha, especially Fulgoridae and Membracidae (Pierce 1995).  The family comprises 40 species worldwide (Heppner 2008), among which Fulgoraecia (= Epiricania) melanoleuca (Fletcher, 1939) is economically very important as an ectoparasitoid of sugarcane lophopid planthopper Pyrilla perpusilla.

Fulgoraecia melanoleuca has been reported from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (Kumarasinghe & Wratten 1996).  It has played a major role in the management of the sugarcane Pyrilla epidemics (Gangwar et al. 2008).  Although it has been recorded in India in 1939 (Fletcher 1939), its biocontrol potential was recognized only during the Pyrilla epidemics in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (Banerjee 1973).  In India, incidence of Fulgoraecia has been recorded in Maharashtra (Gholap & Chandele 1985), Gujarat (Pawar et al. 1988), Rajasthan (Joshi & Sharma 1989), Odisha (Patnaik et al. 1990), Haryana (Chhillar & Madan 1992; Ahlawat & Kumar 2015), Uttar Pradesh (Tripathi & Katiyar 1998), Punjab (Sanehdeep et al. 2003), Uttarakhand (Kumar et al. 2008) and Chhattisgarh (Patre 2016).  In the southern states, Fulgoraecia was recorded in Karnataka (Ansari et al. 1989; Hugar et al. 2002) and Andhra Pradesh (Rajak & Varma 2001).  It has been considered as a potential biocontrol agent against Pyrilla  (Chhillar & Madan 1992; Pawar et al. 2002) and extensively used in management of Pyrilla (Pawar et al. 2002; Seneviratne & Kumarasinghe 2002; Rajak 2007; Pandey et al. 2008).  Fulgoraecia melanoleuca has proved its merit in in situ parasitization due to high multiplication rate, comparatively shorter life cycle, survival under varied agro-climatic conditions, and good searching ability of its host by larvae (Rajak 2006, 2007).  In this paper, we report the natural occurrence of this parasitoid from Cuddalore District of Tamil Nadu, India.

 

Materials and Methods

During our regular field surveys for collection of parasitic insects from different ecosystems, F. melanoleuca was collected from sugarcane Saccharum officinarum at Andipalayam Village of Anna Gramam block (11.77N & 79.55E) of Cuddalore District, Tamil Nadu during July and August 2018.  The number of egg masses, nymphs and adults of P. perpusilla was recorded and these life stages were collected every week and they were kept separately in polythene bags, with the leaves changed as and when necessary and observations made on parasitoid emergence.

From the egg masses collected, parasitized and unparasitized eggs were segregated by their colour (unparasitized eggs being creamy white and parasitized ones dark brown to black) and per cent parasitism was worked out by using the following formula as described by Mishkat & Khalid (2007).  Similarly, per cent parasitism of nymphs and adults was worked out.  Parasitized nymph (Image 1B) and adults (Image 1C) were differentiated by presence of white cottony cushion on the back and pleural abdominal region of the host, respectively.

                                                                                                                                                                       No. of parasitized eggs/nymphs/adults 

Per cent egg/nymph/

adult parasitism              = –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– x 100                                                  Total no. of eggs/nymphs/adults

 

The various life stages of F. melanoleuca (Images 1 & 2) were also observed.

 

Results and Discussion

In our observations during July and August, all the three stages of Pyrilla recorded higher parasitization during August (34.40%, 47.54%, & 45.09%, respectively, Table 1) compared to July.  As per earlier reports by Kumar et al. (2008), the accelerating phase of the Pyrilla starts from early July and the population continued to increase at a faster rate from the second fortnight onwards.  Accordingly, parasitization also started from July and peaked during August.

 

Life history of Fulgoraecia (= Epiricania) melanoleuca

Eggs (Image 1A): A trail of dark brown eggs with few silken threads.  An adult female lays 240–450 eggs in a batch.  The eggs are laid on the abaxial or adaxial surface of the leaf, closer to the midrib.  On maturity, the eggs turn pale and larvae hatch out.

Larva (Images 1B, 1C, 1D): Only three instars are observed.  Larvae are covered with whitish powdery coating (Image 1B).  The first instar is an active wanderer, waits for the host (P. perpusilla) to approach and clings to the body of the host (Image 1B).  Upon attaching to the abdomen of the host, it starts feeding on its haemolymph, externally (Image 1C).  The larvae possess four pairs of abdominal pro-legs with one pair of anal claspers.  Abdominal pro-legs have crochets (Image 1D) for helping in adhesion to host.  The larva leaves the host before the pupation, and spins a cocoon on the leaf surface.

Pupa (Images 2A, 2B): The cocoons are milky white, elongated, convex anteriorly (Image 2A).  Pupa is light brown. Male pupa, short with genital scar in ninth abdominal segment.  Female pupa larger (compared to male) with eighth and ninth abdominal segments fused and genital pore is present on the fused segment (Kumar et al. 2015).  Anus in tenth abdominal segment of pupa in both the sexes.

Adults (Images 2C, 2D, 2E): Exhibit sexual dimorphism, differences in antennae, hindwing coloration and genitalia. Mouthparts reduced in both the sexes, haustellum absent. 

Male: antennae bipectinate, 13-segmented, having long ciliated branches in each segment (Image 2E).  Head with grey and thorax with black scales.  Fore-wings generally with grey scales entirely, but few specimens with white scales up to discal cell, rest with grey scales.  Hind-wings mainly with whitish scales except costal margin with grey scales (Image 2C). 

Female: antenna short, bipectinate but with prominently short cilia.  Head, thorax and wings unicolorous, covered by grey scales (Image 2D).

All the three stages of Pyrilla were parasitized.  Eggs were parasitized by undetermined eulophids during July and August up to the tune of 34.40%.  No other parasitoid was observed from any life stage of Pyrilla during the period of study.  Per cent nymphal and adult parasitism by F. melanoleuca increased from July to August from 30.88 to 47.54 and 34.04 to 45.09, respectively (Table 1).

The natural parasitization of Pyrilla by F. melanoleuca has been reported from various states such as Punjab (Sanehdeep et al. 2003), Uttarakhand (Kumar et al. 2008), Haryana (Ahlawat & Kumar 2015), Bihar (Chand et al. 2016), and in southern India from Karnataka (Hugar et al. 2002).  Published records of natural occurrence of this parasitoid from the state of Tamil Nadu are scanty but for a mention in the tables of annual reports from Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore (Anonymous 2016, 2017).  Here we record its natural occurrence from Tamil Nadu with per cent parasitization as stated above, however, the per cent parasitization is reported to the tune of 50.5 to 78.4 from Haryana (Ahlawat & Kumar 2015) and 61.4 from Bihar (Chand et al. 2016).  Out of 39 parasitized adults collected in the month of July and August, 31 individuals were females and rest males, from which it is evident that F. melanoleuca prefers female Pyrilla than males.  Similar reports of epipyropids parasitizing more of female hosts have been reported on Lophopidae (Misra & Krishna 1986) and Flatidae (Supeno 2011; Swierczewski et al. 2016), however, the exact sex preferential parasitism of F. melanoleuca is not clear and further investigations in this line are required.

 

Table 1. Natural parasitism of Pyrilla perpusilla in various life stages by its natural enemies.

Life stages  of P. perpusilla

collected

             July 2018

           August 2018

TC

P

% parasitism

TC

P

% parasitism

Eggs

183

43

23.49

279

96

34.40

Nymph

68

21

30.88

61

29

47.54

Adult

47

16

34.04

51

23

45.09

TC—Total collected | P—Parasitized.

 

For images - - click here

 

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