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Manduca blackburni, commonly known as Blackburn's Sphinx Moth, is a federally listed endangered species restricted to localized habitats on three islands in the Hawaiian archipelago. Manduca blackburni was thought to be closely related to the widely distributed New World species M. quinquemaculatus, but this has never been formally tested, and shortly after its description, many authors dismissed it as a subspecies or form of M. quinquemaculatus. We used one mitochondrial gene, COI, and two nuclear genes, CAD and EF-1α (2,975 bp total), to examine the phylogenetic relationships between M. blackburni and putative sister species in the genus. The phylogeny resulting from two single-gene analyses (CAD, COI) and the concatenation of all three genes suggest that M. blackburni + M. quinquemaculatus are sister taxa, and the monophyly of each species is supported with relatively high branch support under parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian inference. Manduca blackburni and M. quinquemaculatus al...

Taiwan is at the northeastern limits of the Asian center of diversity for fruit flies in the tribe Dacini, and the country has several endemic species. Between 2013 and 2015, we surveyed the diversity of dacine fruit flies in Taiwan using kairomone baited traps and found 15 species. We report four species for the first time in Taiwan and figure them: Bactrocera nigrifacia (Zhang, Ji, & Chen 2011), B.rubigina (Wang & Zhao 1989), B. dorsaloides (Hardy & Adachi 1954) and B. bhutaniae (Drew & Romig 2013). For the species that are classified as pests, we explored how their spatial distribution correlates with elevation. The oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel 1912), is the most abundant pest on the island, but decreases sharply in abundance at higher elevations. Other pest species occur in much smaller numbers and respond differently to elevation and latitude. We also re-evaluated all records of previously recorded species and add our records to provide a checklist with 30 species of Dacini that occur in Taiwan. All species are regarded as native, six are endemic, and seven are agricultural pests. Historical records were georeferenced and plotted on maps along with records from the 2013–2015 survey to collate all known distribution data. We briefly discuss the state of knowledge of the fruit flies in Taiwan and how the distribution and host usage of Dacini may change in the future. Finally, considering the economic importance of the group, our understanding of their diversity and distributions is surprisingly poor.

The erythrina gall wasp, Quadrastichus erythrinae Kim, has recently and rapidly invaded a broad swath of the tropical and subtropical Pacific Basin, causing severe damage to most species of coral trees (Erythrina spp.). This small (length ∼ 1.5 mm) wasp attacks the photosynthetic tissue (leaves, buds, stems, flowers) of ornamental and native Erythrina, often killing the trees. This invasion poses an immediate extinction threat to native Erythrina spp. throughout Asia, Australia, and a number of Pacific archipelagos, including Hawai'i, where populations of the endemic E. sandwicensis have been devastated. Although this pest is known to occur naturally in East Africa, the precise geographic origin of the invasions remains unknown. In this study, 1,623 base pairs of mitochondrial (cytochrome c oxidase subunit I) and nuclear DNA (elongation factor alpha) were used to confirm systematic identity and to examine genetic divergence among invasive populations from Hawai'i, Guam, American Samoa, Japan, Si...

The koa moth, Scotorythra paludicola, is an endemic Hawaiian moth that undergoes sporadic outbreaks in koa forests in Hawai‘i, causing vast defoliations of its host plant, Acacia koa. We studied one such outbreak that occurred on East Maui in 2003, in which approximately 16 km 2 of forest were defoliated. We collected adult moths and larvae, and recorded size-class distribution of larvae in defoliated regions. Larvae at a given site tended to be of a similar size class, suggesting that outbreaks were synchronous, and mean development time from first instar to adulthood was 42 days under laboratory conditions. Mortality of field-collected, laboratory-reared larvae due to disease was high (80%), making it impossible to quantify meaningful parasitism rates, but three non-native hymenopteran primary parasitoids were reared (the braconids Meteorus laphygmae and Cotesia marginiventris, and the ichneumonid Hyposoter exiguae). One ichneumonid hyperparasitoid, Gelis sp., was also reared. No native parasitoids were reared. We found no relationship between occurrence of five koa moth outbreaks on East Maui between 1920 and 2006 and annual or monthly precipitation or temperature during that period.

Larvae of the endemic Hawaiian leafroller moth, Omiodes continuatalis (Wallengren), were used in controlled exposure trials on the island of Maui, Hawai‘i, in May–August 2006, to examine effects of introduced parasitoids on native Hawaiian Lepidoptera. During the trials we observed O. continuatalis larvae burrowing up to 14 cm into the soil beneath plants on which they were deployed. This discovery reflects the first record of fossorial behavior not associated with pupation in larvae of Hawaiian Omiodes and suggests how O. continuatalis, a species once listed as extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, may persist despite intense pressure from introduced biological control agents.