Variole Paropsine Beetle - Paroppsis variolosa
Subfamily Chrysomelinae, FAMILY CHRYSOMELIDAE
This page contains information and pictures about Variole Paropsine Beetles that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Body length 12mm
- Those beetle adults and larvae feed on Eucalyptus tree leaves. They are beautiful golden brown colour with yellow dots, round convex in shape.
- We can find them easily in bush on the young Eucalyptus tree. Usually they hide or deed under the leaves.
- Both adult and larval stages feed on eucalypt leaves. They feed on a wide range of eucalypts.
- Leaf beetles pass winter as adults under bark or amongst leaf litter. In spring when the trees are producing fresh new growth, the beetles become active. They mate and start laying eggs.
- Eucalypt Leaf Beetle larvae length 8mm
- The eggs are laid on new growth on the terminal shoots. The eggs hatched and the larvae feed on the new Eucalypt leave in group. The larvae are brown in colour with white dots on body. Their heads and tails are black in colour. They have there pairs of thoracic legs but no abdominal legs.
- Pupa, length 10mm
- There are four larval instars. When larvae are mature, they drop to the ground and pupate. In the about picture, the creamy-yellow ones are the pupa. The dark colour ones are the last instars about to moult last time to turn into pupa. They took about three weeks time to turn into adults. The second pictures shows a leaf beetle just turn into an adult.
- Eggs on leaf, length 2mm 1st instars
- On mid-summer, we found some insect eggs attached on a gum leave. We believed they were the Eucalyptus Leaf Beetle eggs. We brought them home and after a few days later, the small larvae come out from the eggs. The larvae look exactly the same as the larger larvae except much smaller. The first thing they did after hatching were eating their egg-cases. Look carefully at those eggs we can see the larvae was developing inside.
The food plants
- Both adult and larval stages feed on eucalypt leaves. They feed on a wide range of Eucalyptus and Angophora.
- Angophora sp., family Myrtaceae
