Cassida flaveola Thunberg 1794

• Main Authors: Majka, Christopher G., Lesage, Laurent
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Arthropoda; Insecta; Coleoptera; Chrysomelidae; Cassida; Cassida flaveola; Yukon; Northwest Territories; Canada; British Columbia; Wilcox; Riley; Alaska
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/6228617; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6228617

Cassida flaveola Thunberg, 1794 Identification. Keys for the identification of adult C. flaveola are found in Barber (1916), Wilcox (1954), Chagnon & Robert (1962), Riley (1986 a, 1986 b), Downie & Arnett (1996), and Riley et al. (2002). Adults of C. flaveola are distinctly smaller (4-5 mm) than those of C. rubiginosa (6-8 mm), their elytral punctures are arranged in regular rows whereas they are confused in C. rubiginosa (Fig. 1), and the pronotum and elytra are yellowish brown with translucent margins (Fig. 2). History and distribution. Early records of C. flaveola reported by Barber (1916) were from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin (1896 and 1911), Rigaud, Québec (1902), and Duluth and Mora, Minnesota (1907). Barber (1916) also indicated that a specimen reported as C. nobilis L. by Mannerheim (1853) from Sitka, Alaska may have been C. flaveola. However, this specimen is no longer in the Zoological Institute collection in St. Petersburg, Russia and may now be lost (Riley 1986 b). Cassida flaveola has subsequently been broadly reported in North America from the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and British Columbia, east across Canada to Québec, and in the United States from New Hampshire south to Maryland and West Virginia, and west to Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana (LeSage 1991; Riley et al. 2003). In the Old World, its distribution is similar to C. rubiginosa except that in Europe it has not been recorded from Portugal, Sicily, Croatia, Greece, and southern Russia (Audisio 2005 a). Biology. Little is known of the biology of Cassida flaveola in North America. Open habitats are apparently preferred. Most Nova Scotia specimens were collected in pastures, one was found on seashore on coastal dunes, and one specimen preserved in the CNC was collected in an alvar in Almonte (Ontario). Kosior (1975) investigated the developmental biology of the species in Ojcow National Park in Poland. The following account of the biology of C. flaveola is based largely on his investigations. One to two eggs (average 1.6) are laid ...