After 2006, eight sorts of gall induced by eight segregates of Asphondylia (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) were newly found on eight plant species belonging to six families in Japan. As a result, six described species and 18 seregates of Japanese Asphondylia are now hosted by a total of 32 plant genera belonging to 25 families. Newly recorded host plants include three alien species. These findings imply the second, third and fourth examples of host range expansion to alien plants by Japanese gall midges unless they are alien Asphondylia. In general, gall-inducing cecidomyiids are mono-or oligophagous and hardly expand their host range to newly encountered plants. However, Asphondylia species may be able to expand their host range to alien plants more easily than other gall-inducing cecidomyiids, because some Asphondylia species are polyphagous, multivoltine and sometimes exhibit host alternation. Further information on their morphological features, ecological traits, distribution records and DNA sequencing data will enable species identification and clarify their life history patterns and host ranges.
Although camera trapping has been effectively used for wildlife monitoring, its application to multihabitat insects (i.e., insects requiring terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems) is limited. Among such insects, perching dragonflies of the genus Sympetrum (darter dragonflies) are agroenvironmental indicators that substantially contribute to agricultural biodiversity. To examine whether custom-developed camera traps for perching dragonflies can be used to assess the relative population density of darter dragonflies, camera trapping, a line-transect survey of mature adult dragonflies, and a line-transect survey of exuviae were conducted for three years in rice paddy fields in Japan. The detection frequency of camera traps in autumn was significantly correlated with the density index of mature adults recorded during the transect surveys in the same season for both Sympetrum infuscatum and other darter species. In analyses of camera-detection frequency in autumn and exuviae in early summer, a significant correlation was observed between the camera-detection frequency of mature adults and the exuviae-density index in the following year for S. infuscatum; however, a similar correlation was not observed for other darter species. These results suggest that terrestrial camera trapping has the potential to be effective for monitoring the relative density of multihabitat users such as S. infuscatum, which shows frequent perching behavior and relatively short-distance dispersal.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.