Chilocorus infernalis Mulsant

POORANI, J., 2023, An illustrated guide to the lady beetles (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) of the Indian Subcontinent. Part II. Tribe Chilocorini, Zootaxa 5378 (1), pp. 1-108 : 48-52

Chilocorus infernalis Mulsant

( Figs 35 , 36 )

Chilocorus infernalis Mulsant, 1853: 189 .

Chilocorus bijugus Mulsant, 1853: 61 .

Chilocorus bijugus : Crotch 1874: 183; Korschefsky 1932: 242; Kapur 1956: 259; Nagaraja & Hussainy 1967: 249; Miyatake 1970a: 324, 1985: 12; Pang & Mao 1979: 90; Jing 1992: 566; Cao et al. 1992: 162; Pang et al. 2004: 27; Kovář 2007: 593; Ren et al. 2009: 126; Li et al. 2018: 23 .

Chilocorus bijugus infernalis : Korschefsky 1932: 242.

Chilocorus infernalis : Crotch 1874: 183; Poorani 2002: 311.

Diagnosis. Length: 4.30–6.00 mm; width: 4.00–5.00 mm. Form obovate, posteriorly narrowed, dorsum strongly convex and glabrous. Ground colour uniformly shiny black, sometimes with a greenish tinge, each elytron with a pair of reddish testaceous or orange yellow spots a little before middle in anterior half, outer spot usually smaller than inner spot, rarely subequal ( Fig. 35a–c ). Rarely both elytral spots fused, forming a much larger yellowish-orange, quadrate macula around middle ( Fig. 36a–c ). Abdominal postcoxal line incomplete ( Fig. 35d , 36d ). Male genitalia ( Figs 35e–g , 36e–g ) and spermatheca ( Fig. 35h ) as illustrated.

Distribution. India (Arunachal Pradesh; Himachal Pradesh; Jammu & Kashmir; Meghalaya; Uttarakhand; Uttar Pradesh); Pakistan; Bhutan; Nepal; Himalayas; Introduced and established in parts of Russia. All records of this species from peninsular India (e.g. Maqbool et al. 2020) are certainly erroneous.

Prey/associated habitat. Hemiptera : Aleyrodidae : Citrus whitefly. Aphidoidea: Adelges sp. , Aphis pomi De Geer , Brachycaudus helichrysi (Kaltenbach) , Eriosoma lanigerum (Hausmann) . Coccoidea: Aonidiella aurantii (Maskell) , Ericerus pela (Chavannes) , Lepidosaphes afganensis Borchsenius (= Cornimytilus afganensis (Borchsenius)) , Diaspidiotus prunorum (Laing) , Lopholeucaspis japonica (Cockerell) , Metaceronema japonica (Maskell) , Parlatoria ziziphi (Lucas) , Comstockaspis perniciosa (Comstock) , Tecaspis sp. , Unaspis yanonensis (Kuwana) . Collected in association with scales on apple, wild apple, pear, peach, and other temperate fruits, gum Arabic tree (‘Kikar’), olive, citrus, Euonymus , Olea cuspidata , willow, mulberry, etc.

Seasonal occurrence. Active during May-September in north-western and north-eastern regions of India. Very effective in the early months of summer in Kashmir ( Pruthi & Rao 1951). Collected during April–May, July and October in northern India (label data). In Kashmir, adults were observed to emerge in June and started overwintering in November ( Maqbool et al. 2020).

Natural enemies. Heavily parasitized by a number of chalcid and eulophid parasitoids from the end of July in Kashmir ( Pruthi & Rao 1951); Homalotylus sp. ( Encyrtidae ); Aprostocetus neglectus (Domenichini) (listed as Tetrastichus neglectus ) ( Richerson 1970).

Notes: Chilocorus bijugus is used as the valid name of this species by many workers, including Li et al. (2018) who treated it in their revision of Chinese Chilocorus . Though Mulsant (1850) described both C. bijugus and C. infernalis in the same work (with a page precedence to C. bijugus ), Crotch (1874) gave precedence to C. infernalis over C. bijugus and going by the First Reviser Principle of the ICZN, C. infernalis has priority over C. bijugus as treated by Crotch (1874) though C. bijugus is the more popular and widely used name in the published literature.

For more detailed descriptions and / or illustrations, see Kapur (1956), Nagaraja & Hussainy (1967), Miyatake (1970a), Rafi et al. (2005), Ren et al. (2009), Hayat et al. (2014), and Li et al. (2018). Ahmad & Ghani (1966) and Jalali & Singh (1989a) studied its biology on various diaspine scales.

Figures

FIGURE 35. Chilocorus infernalis Mulsant, nominate form: a. adult, dorsal view; b. adult, frontal view; c. adult, lateral view; d. abdominal postcoxal line; e–g. male genitalia: e. tegmen, lateral view; f. tegmen, ventral view; g. penis; h. spermatheca.

FIGURE 36. Chilocorus infernalis Mulsant, variant from Arunachal Pradesh, north-east India: a. adult, dorsal view; b. adult, lateral view; c. adult, frontal view; d. abdominal postcoxal line; e–g. male genitalia: e. tegmen, ventral view; f. tegmen, lateral view; g. penis.