First record of the
Long-horned Beetle Sarothrocera lowii White, 1846 (Cerambycidae:Lamiinae: Lamiini) from
India
Hemant V. Ghate1, Sophio Riphung2 & N.S.A. Thakur 3
1 Head,
Department of Zoology, Modern College, Shivajinagar,
Pune, Maharashtra 411005, India
2 Plant
Protection Officer (Entomology), Central Integrated Pest Management Centre,
Opp. Commerce, R.G. Buruah Road, Guwahati, Assam
781003, India
3 Pricipal Scientist and HOD, Division of Entomology,
Indian Council for Agricultural Research, Umaim,
Meghalaya 793103, India
Email: 1 hemantghate@gmail.com
(corresponding author), 2 sophioriphung@gmail.com, 3 nsa_thakur@yahoo.com
Date of publication (online): 26 July 2012
Date of publication (print): 26 July 2012
ISSN 0974-7907 (online) | 0974-7893 (print)
Editor: Francesco Vitali
Manuscript details:
Ms #
o2890
Received 26 July 2011
Final received 06 May 2012
Finally accepted 04 June 2012
Citation: Ghate, H.V., S. Riphung & N.S.A. Thakur (2012). First
record of the Long-horned Beetle Sarothrocera lowii White, 1846 (Cerambycidae:Lamiinae: Lamiini) from
India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 4(7): 2709–2712.
Copyright: © HemantV. Ghate, Sophio Riphung & N.S.A. Thakur 2012. Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. JoTT allows unrestricted use of this article in any medium
for non-profit purposes, reproduction and distribution by providing adequate
credit to the authors and the source of publication.
Acknowledgements: The authors are grateful to
the Indian Council for Agricultural Research, Delhi, for its support through
NPIB project at North East Region, Umiam, and to the
Department of Zoology, Modern College, Pune, for providing facilities related
with identification. HVG is particularly grateful to Mr. Carolus Holzschuh, Villach (Austria) and Mr. Daniel J. Heffern, Houston (USA) for their continuous support in work
on this group. We are also grateful to Mr. Francesco Vitali(Luxembourg) for his generous help with literature, encouragement and comments
on the first draft of this paper. The work on Cerambycidaewas supported by a grant from BCUD, Pune University.
The cerambycidfauna of India is quite rich. Beeson (1941) stated the number of species to be greater than 1200, and
several hundred species have been described since then. A comprehensive and up-to-date work
listing all known species has not been published so far. Gahan (1906)
compiled the ‘non-Lamiinae’ subfamilies as the ‘Fauna
of British India’ volume, but in spite of the fact that they are numerous and
difficult to diagnose, Lamiinae are not yet put in a
single volume and hence identification of its members is a difficult task.
While studying the collection of Cerambycidae from northeastern India, we have come across a
species (Ukhrul District, Manipur, ix.2009, coll. S. Riphung, presently preserved in Modern College, Pune,
Maharashtra 411005, as NE-Ceramb 25) that is not
recorded from Indian territories before.
This species has been identified as a
female of Sarothrocera lowiiWhite, 1846 on the basis of keys by Rondon & von Breuning (1970). Detailed characters of the species, as given by the original author
(White 1846), and the diagnosis given by Pascoe (1866) were also checked. In addition, the characters given by vonBreuning (1943) were confirmed.
White (1846) described the genus Sarothrocera to accommodate a species from Borneo
collected by Mr. Hugh Low, as Sarothrocera lowii. In
brief, diagnosis of the genus given by White is: “Antennae with the first joint
thick and furnished at the end on the inside with a tuft of hairs, 2ndjoint very small, with one or two hairs, 3rd to 7thjoints behind fringed with longish hairs, the hairs on the 3rd &
4th very thickly distributed and extending over a considerable part
of hind edge. Thoraxalomost as long as wide, with a short spine on each
side. Legs with the femora
compressed, especially above; the tibiae much compressed, slender at the base,
getting thicker towards the middle, and then dilated at the end, with the sides
nearly parallel, etc.” White
mentions of color as “of a rich brown, slightly tinged with ochraceous,
the scutellum is of pale yellow; the base of the
elytra is verrucose above, the small warts not
extending the middle, etc.” (Image 1).
Later, von Breuning(1943) provided additional features, some of which are: “…head non retractile; pronotum transverse with prominent lateral spines; antennae
robust, one-fourth or more longer in female or twice longer than body in male.
Scape and following antennomeres II-VIII densely
covered with long black hairs. Scape moderately long, very strong, with complete cicatrix; 3rdarticle longer than 4th, three-fourth longer than scape; antennal
tubercles close, very elevated; eyes coarsely faceted, inferior lobe longer
than broad; elytra elongated, convex, rounded at the apex; prosternalprocess short, feebly elevated; legs moderately long, very robust; protibiae flattened, metatibiaewith a dorsal furrow, claws divaricated..” .
In ventral view, the body appears to be
covered with thin recumbent light brown pubescence (Image 2). In lateral view (Image 3), one can see
dense antennal hairs from scape to 8th antennomere,
a character seen in female; in male the dense hairs are present only up to the
base of 4th antennomere, as pointed out byBreuning (1943) and Rondon& Breuning (1970). The frontal close-up of head (Image 4)
shows nature of antennal tubercles and shape of the forehead, while the dorsal
close-up of head and pronotum (Image 5) reveals a
furrow between the eyes, lateral prothoracic spine and tongue-like scutellum.
Rondon & von Breuning(1970) mentioned its distribution to be in Myanmar, Indonesia and Laos. Borneo, Sumatra and West Malaysia are
additional known places where this beetle is found (Breuning1943).
Mukhopadhyay & Halder(2004) first compiled the list of Cerambycidae from
Manipur. This list was based on
earlier collection records as well as fresh surveys and it contains 43 species
belonging to 33 genera and five subfamilies. Only eight of them belonged to the Lamiinae and S. lowii was
not among the species mentioned therein. Hence, the species becomes the first record for Manipur.
Similarly, publications on Cerambycidae of the other regions of northeastern India
also did not record the presence of S. lowii. Sengupta& Sengupta (1981) listed nine Lamiinae-species
from Arunachal Pradesh, Mukhopadhyay & Biswas (2000b) listed eight species from Tripura, Mukhopadhyay & Biswas (2000a)
compiled the list of Cerambycidae from Meghalaya
including 48 Lamiinae; and Mukhopadhyay& Halder (2003) listed 44 Lamiinaefrom Sikkim. These lists were based
on earlier collection records as well as fresh surveys in most cases and do not
mention S. lowii. Since this species is not known from any
other region of India, it is also an addition to the Indian Cerambycidaefauna.
According to Beeson (1941), the beetles
emerge in May-July and the host-plants are Engelhardtia spicata Lesch. ex Blume (Juglandaceae)
and Stereospermum suaveolensDC. (Bignoniaceae).
REFERENCES
Beeson, C.F.C. (1941). The Ecology and Control of the Forest
Insects of India and the Neighbouring Countries.(1993-Edition by Bishen Singh MahendraPal Singh, Dehradun), 1007pp.
Gahan, C.J. (1906). Fauna of British India
including Ceylon and Burma, Coleoptera Vol. I (Cerambycidae). Taylor &
Francis, London, 329pp.
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