|
|
I was taking a
picture of the egg of the giant
swallowtail butterfly, The tiny white sphere on the right. When I
looked at the enlarged picture on the computer screen, I discovered
that the dark shadow inside the curled leaf was a weevil (a beetle of
the family Curclionidae).
The
Fuller's rose weevil is nocturnal. So when I uncurled the leaf in day
light, she was slow moving and easy to photograph. This pest was
introduced from South America in the late 1800's. They caused great
problems for the citrus growers, among others. My poor tangelo tree seems
to get
every problem there is. No one has ever found a male Fuller's rose
weevil. But the females go on laying eggs that hatch females.
This
view shows the unusually short snout, as weevil snouts go.