Characters can be morphological (e.g., number of antennal segments, color), anatomical (e.g., type of proventriculus), molecular (most commonly nucleotides in DNA), behavioral (type of a gallery), and ecological (e.g., host plant). In the ecological sense, bark beetles are species of Scolytinae whose larvae and adults live in and consume phloem of trees and other woody plants.Ĭharacter-a feature that can be used to designate and compare species. In the taxonomic sense, bark beetles are all species in the weevil subfamily Scolytinae, including species that do not consume bark. Ambrosia beetles are therefore not monophyletic, and the name is not a taxonomic designation.īark beetle-“bark beetle” is both a taxonomic and ecological designation. Obligate symbiosis with fungi is present in at least 11 independent scolytine and platypodine groups. By comparison, scolytine bark beetles typically produce brownish boring frass because they mine the inner bark as they construct galleries.Īmbrosia beetle-a species in either of the weevil subfamilies Scolytinae or Platypodinae that is obligately associated with nutritional fungal symbionts. The entrance hole is seldom more than 1 mm in diameter the boring frass is light in color initially, but darkens as the primary symbionts begin to grow or as it is contaminated with larval fecal pellets. Ambrosia beetles infest the bole of the tree, boring directly through the bark into the xylem. However, temperate-region ambrosia beetles of the genus Corthylus and warm temperate-, semitropical-, and tropical-region members of the scolytine beetle tribe Xyleborini ( Xyleborus and Xylosandrus) are capable of attacking apparently healthy and undamaged woody hosts. Woody timber dead for more than a year is seldom infested.
Most ambrosia beetles in temperate regions infest cut timber, wind-thrown trees, wind-broken limbs or boles of trees, and/or suppressed or diseased trees.
ALEXANDER WEIR, in Biodiversity of Fungi, 2004 Beetles Infesting Wood.
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