New species of stink bug found in Kenting - via The Anomalist

Publication Date：08/07/2014

Source： Taiwan Today

An international team of entomologists led by scientists from Taiwan has identified a new species of stink bug in southern Taiwan’s Kenting National Park.

The only other place the bug, named Amblycara innocens Tsai and Redei after two of its discoverers, has been found is Palawan Island in the Philippines.

The findings were published by Taiwan researcher Tsai Jing-fu from Hokkaido University in Japan and Hungarian Dávid Rédei at mainland China’s Nankai University, in the entomological journal of the National Museum in Prague, Czech Republic.

According to Tsai and Rédei, the finding for such zoogeographically disjunct dispersal between Taiwan and Palawan provides a new interpretation that the new species disperse within the same landmass Sunda Shelf during Pleistocene glacial cycles, either through a northern route from the current China (from Palawan to Taiwan), or by a southern route through Borneo (disperse from Taiwan to Palawan).

“Based on studying specimens of this genus from different geographic areas, we can obtain clues about how Taiwan interacted with surrounding islands in the past,” Tsai said. “This is solid taxonomic work that sheds light on East Asian biogeography.”

Prior to the team’s work, the Oriental and Austro-Pacific stink bug genus Amblycara Bergroth was considered to contain only one species—A. gladiatorial—whose range stretches from India to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia and Fiji.

Continued ...

Improved Stink Bug Trapping Methods

Jan. 18, 2013 — Baited black traps in a pyramid shape attract significantly more brown marmorated stink bugs than other traps, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. Evaluating stink bug responses to different visual stimuli may help manufacturers design better traps for monitoring the bugs.

Entomologist Tracy Leskey at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Appalachian Fruit Research Station in Kearneysville, W.V., focused on visual stimuli that can attract the stink bugs to traps that will help farmers monitor the level of infestation in their fields and orchards.

In field trials in 2009 and 2010, Leskey and her colleagues found that significantly more stink bug adults and juvenile bugs, called nymphs, were captured in the baited black pyramid traps than in other traps. The researchers also found that more adults and nymphs were captured in a trap placed on the ground than in a commercially available trap hung from a tree limb.

These prototype pyramid traps may serve as monitoring tools to assess the presence, abundance and seasonal activity of pests and natural enemies to determine the need for insecticide applications.

Leskey and her colleagues also found that in 2010, 2011 and 2012, stink bugs produced two generations in one year in Kearneysville, based on the presence of eggs and newly molted adults in field cage experiments. Although it has been reported that these bugs produce only one brood annually in eastern Pennsylvania, it appears that in more southerly locations within the Mid-Atlantic region, they can produce two generations per year, according to Leskey.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130118112635.htm