Wednesday, December 12, 2007
D0470
A new species of Pharaxonotha (Coleoptera: Erotylidae) pollinating two species of Zamia (Zamiaceae) in Puerto Rico
Paul Skelley, Florida State Collection of Arthropods, PO Box 147100, Gainesville, FL and Nico Franz, franz@uprm.edu, University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez, Department of Biology, PO Box 9012, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.
Beetles in the pantropical genus Pharaxonotha Reitter (Erotylidae: Pharaxonothinae) are pollinators of cycads in the southeastern United States and Central America. These pollinator/plant associations are considered ancient and are highly specialized, with the cycad cones serving as substrates for beetle mating, oviposition, and larval development. Here we report on a putatively new species of Pharaxonotha pollinating the cones of Zamia amblyphyllidia D.W. Stevenson and Z. portoricensis Urban in the Cambalache and Susúa Commonwealth Forests of Puerto Rico, respectively. This report is only the second of its kind for the Caribbean region, where another species of Pharaxonotha was recently observed to pollinate a species of MicrocycasZamia cones during the period of receptivity and pollen release. Fruit set was apparently high, suggesting that Pharaxonotha is an exclusive and efficient pollinator of these cycads. Larvae of different stages were found only in the male cones. The new observations are discussed in light of an analogous association between cycads and weevils in the genus Rhopalotria Chevrolat (Belidae: Oxycoryninae).
Species 1: Coleoptera Erotylidae Pharaxonotha sp
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