Documentation and taxonomic studies of Lepidopteran fruit borers infestingLitchi in Nagaland, India, with a new distributional record for the country
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24154/jhs.v20i2.3024Keywords:
Damage symptoms, identification key, new record, roving survey, taxonomyAbstract
An extensive roving survey was conducted across Nagaland to document the insect-infesting litchi fruits during 2021-2023. During the survey, a total of five identified species, namely Conogethes punctiferalis (Guenée,1854), Conopomorpha sinensis Bradley, 1986, Cryptophlebia ombrodelta (Lower, 1898), Deudorix epijarbus (Moore, 1857) and Thaumatotibia zophophanes (Turner, 1946) were recorded. Notably, the species T. zophophanes was a new record from India, while, C. ombrodelta and D. epijarbus were new distribution records from Nagaland state of India. Furthermore, all five species have been described with quality images. In addition, damage symptoms of each species, along with larvae, have been given. The article provides fundamental information that would enable quick identification and formulating species-specific pest management strategies.
Downloads
References
Acebes-Doria, A. L., Gayle, S. M., Cha, D. H., Rocquigny, N., & Short, B. D. (2023). Commercial lure comparison for monitoring of Cryptophlebia spp. (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) associated with macadamia in Hawaii. Proceedings of the Hawaiian Entomological Society, 55, 1–9.
Bai, H. Y., Li, H. H., & Kendrick, R. C. (2009). Microlepidoptera of Hong Kong: Checklist of Gracillariidae (Lepidoptera: Gracillarioidea). SHILAP Revista de Lepidopterología, 37, 495–509.
Bradley, J. D. (1953). Some important species of the genus Cryptophlebia Walsingham, 1889, with descriptions of three new species (Lepidoptera: Olethreutidae). Bulletin of Entomological Research, 43(4), 679–689. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007485300026729
Bradley, J. D. (1986). Identity of the South-East Asian cocoa moth, Conopomorpha cramerella (Snellen) (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae), with descriptions of three allied new species. Bulletin of Entomological Research, 76, 41–51. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000748530001525X
Chakravarthy, A. K. (2018). The black-spotted yellow borer, Conogethes punctiferalis Guenée and allied species. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0390-6
Chandra, K., Kumar, V., Singh, N., Raha, A., & Sanyal, A. K. (2019). Assemblages of Lepidoptera in Indian Himalaya through long-term monitoring plots. Zoological Survey of India.
Chang, V. C. S. (1995). Trapping Cryptophlebia illepida and C. ombrodelta (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) in macadamia in Hawaii. International Journal of Pest Management, 41, 50–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/09670879509371932
Choudhary, J. S., Prabhakar, S. C., Moanaro, D. B., & Kumar, S. (2013). Litchi stink bug (Tessaratoma javanica) outbreak in Jharkhand, India, on litchi. Phytoparasitica, 41, 73–77. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12600-012-0265-x
Dalui, T., & Sarkar, S. K. (2021). Seasonal incidence and damage potentiality of litchi fruit borer (Conopomorpha sinensis Bradley, 1986) in relation to major abiotic environmental factors. Ecology, Environment and Conservation, 27, 302–307.
Das, A., Mazumder, A., Pathania, P. C., & Singh, N. (2020). Insecta: Lepidoptera: Heterocera (moths). In K. Chandra et al. (Eds.), Faunal diversity of Western Ghats (pp. 535–569).
Diakonoff, A. (1954). Considerations on the terminology of the genitalia in Lepidoptera. Lepidopterists’ News, 8(3–4), 67–74.
Follett, P. A., & Lower, R. A. (2000). Irradiation to ensure quarantine security for Cryptophlebia spp. (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) in sapindaceous fruits from Hawaii. Journal of Economic Entomology, 93, 1848–1854. https://doi.org/10.1603/0022-0493-93.6.1848
Gopurenko, D., Gillespie, P. S., Minana, R., & Reynolds, O. L. (2021). DNA barcode identification of Conopomorpha cramerella (Snellen, 1904) (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae) and other moths affecting cacao in Papua New Guinea. Austral Entomology, 60, 598–609. https://doi.org/10.1111/aen.12559
Gupta, P., & Tara, J. S. (2019). Diversity of some lepidopteran insect pests associated with Litchi chinensis from Jammu district, Jammu and Kashmir, India. Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovation Research, 6, 98–105.
Hameed, S. F., Singh, P. P., & Singh, S. P. (2001). Pests. In K. S. Chauhan (Ed.), Litchi: Botany, production, utilization (pp. 14–28).
Horak, M. (2006). Olethreutine moths of Australia (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae). CSIRO Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1071/9780643094086
Horak, M., & Komai, F. (2016). Cryptophlebia, Thaumatotibia, and Archiphlebia in Australia (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae). Zootaxa, 4179(3), 441–477. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4179.3.5
Hu, G. L., Brown, J., Heikkilä, M., Aarvik, L., & Mutanen, M. (2023). Molecular phylogeny, divergence time, biogeography and host plant usage in the tortricid tribe Grapholitini. Cladistics, 39, 359–381. https://doi.org/10.1111/cla.12543
Kawahara, A. Y., et al. (2017). A molecular phylogeny and revised higher-level classification for the leaf-mining moth family Gracillariidae. Systematic Entomology, 42, 60–81. https://doi.org/10.1111/syen.12210
Lall, B. S., & Sharma, D. D. (1978). Studies on the bionomics and control of the cocoa moth Acrocercops cramerella. Pesticides, 12, 40–42.
Mitter, C., Regier, J. C., & Cummings, M. P. (2017). Phylogeny and evolution of Lepidoptera. Annual Review of Entomology, 62, 265–283. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ento-031616-035125
Namba, R. (1957). Cryptophlebia illepida (Butler) and other insect pests of macadamia nut in Hawaii. Proceedings of the Hawaiian Entomological Society, 16, 284–297.
Pathania, P. C., Das, A., Brown, J. W., & Chandra, K. (2020). Catalogue of Tortricidae of India. Zootaxa, 4757, 1–95. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4757.1.1
Scoble, M. J. (1992). The Lepidoptera: Form, function and diversity. Oxford University Press.
Snellen, P. C. T. (1890). A catalogue of the Pyralidina of Sikkim. Transactions of the Entomological Society of London, 38, 557–647. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2311.1890.tb03031.x
Tuxen, S. L. (1970). Taxonomist’s glossary of genitalia in insects. Stechert-Hafner.
Waite, G. K., & Hwang, J. S. (2002). Pests of litchi and longan. In J. E. Peña et al. (Eds.), Tropical fruit pests and pollinators (pp. 331–359). CABI. https://doi.org/10.1079/9780851994345.0331
Downloads
Published
Data Availability Statement
None
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 P MAHESWARA REDDY, L Imtinaro, J S Choudhary, M Chandan Suravi, D Hijam Shila, N Pankaj, B Susanta, M Shankara Murthy (Author)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright. Articles published are made available as open access articles, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 
This journal permits and encourages authors to share their submitted versions (preprints), accepted versions (postprints) and/or published versions (publisher versions) freely under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license while providing bibliographic details that credit, if applicable.



. 








