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

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.


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 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.

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No. of parasitized eggs/nymphs/adults Per cent egg/nymph/ 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 . Anus in tenth abdominal segment of pupa in both the sexes.
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(Anonymous , 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  (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

Image 2 A-E. Life stages of Fulgoraecia melanoleuca: A-Cocoon on sugarcane leaf | B-cocoon showing pupal exuviae | C-Male | D-Female | E-Male antennae showing long ciliated branches. © H. Sankararaman.
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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. www.threatenedtaxa.org The Journal of Threatened Taxa (JoTT) is dedicated to building evidence for conservation globally by publishing peer-reviewed articles online every month at a reasonably rapid rate at www.threatenedtaxa.org. All articles published in JoTT are registered under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise mentioned. JoTT allows allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and distribution of articles in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publication.