Natural history of Platypria (Platypria) hystrix (Fabricius, 1798) on Fabaceae host plants, with notes on other Platypria species in India (Chrysomelidae, Cassidinae, Hispini)

Abstract

The leaf-beetle genus Platypria Guérin-Méneville, 1840 comprises two subgenera and 34 species (Chrysomelidae: Cassidinae: Hispini). Host plants are documented for eight species and indicate mostly perennial species of Fabaceae and Rhamnaceae. Larvae and pupae have been documented for two Platypria species. This paper presents novel natural history data, based on a field study of populations of Platypria (Platypria) hystrix (Fabricius, 1798) on Erythrina stricta Roxb. and Pueraria phaseoloides (Roxb.) Benth. in Kerala, south India and on Erythrina variegata L., Pueraria montana var. lobata (Willd.) Maes. & S. Almeida and Mucuna pruriens (L) DC in Assam, northeast India. Three new Fabaceae hosts are reported for P. (P.) hystrix. Brief notes and new host records, based on field observations, are also provided for the other three species of Platypria in India – P. (P.) chiroptera Gestro, 1899, P. (P.) echidna Guérin-Méneville, 1840 and P. (P.) erinaceus (Fabricius, 1801). Platypria females slit the leaf to lay a single egg which is covered with secretions that harden as an ootheca, the egg covering in Cassidinaes. l. There are five larval stages, each with the typical ‘hispine’ mining form and behaviour – a flattened cream-coloured body, chitinised head capsule and claws, and feeding on mesophyll and leaving irregular blotch mines on the host leaves. Pupation occurs in an independent pupal mine and lasts about a week. These observations suggest new potential phylogenetic character hypotheses that can stimulate better data collection on leaf-mining Cassidinae and help resolve evolutionary patterns amongst these basal mining genera.

Host relationships and biological notes of Cassidinae beetles (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae) in Qiannan Prefecture, Guizhou, China

“… Dactylispa excisa , D. similis and D. uhmanni make pupal chambers in the leaves, which are interesting and worth studying further in our future work. Pupal chambers have been reported in some dicot-feeding Hispini species, such as Platypria erinaceus (Fabricius, 1801), P. hystrix (Fabricius, 1798) ( Ranade et al 2021 ), P. melli Uhmann, 1954 ( Liao et al 2014 ) and Cassidispa relicta Medvedev, 1957 ( Liao et al 2018b ). In addition, pupal chambers are also found in other Cassidinae tribes, such as Notosacantha dorsalis (Waterhouse, 1877) ( Monteith et al 2021 ) and Notosacantha vicaria (Spaeth, 1913) ( Nilesh et al 2000 ) in Notosacanthini .…”

Field survey of Cassidinae beetles (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae) and their host plants in southern Guangxi, China

“…The nestedness in both studies was moderate ( Meskens et al 2011 ). Host plants of Cassidinae are in diverse plant taxonomic groups and life forms, and different Cassidinae groups may prefer different plant groups ( Chen et al 1986 , Buzzi 1994 , Hawkeswood 2003 , Chaboo 2007 , Sultan et al 2008 , Liao et al 2015 , Liao 2015 , Staines 2015 , Maican and Serafim 2017 , Reid 2017 , Liu 2018 , Liu et al 2019 , Morrison et al 2019 , Nishida et al 2020 , Ranade et al 2021 , Schnepp and Riley 2021 , Gomes et al 2021 , Özdikmen and Coral Şahin 2021 , Santos Cajé et al 2021 , Borowiec and Świętojańska 2022 ). Considering the leaf-mining hispines around the world, their hosts cover 35 plant orders, 80 plant families and 443 plant genera, most of which belong to the Poaceae ( Liao et al 2015 ).…”