Issue No. 426
James E. Hayden and Lyle Buss
December, 2012
Introduction
Palpita persimilis Munroe (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) is a defoliator of olives and privet in South America (Gomez 1999; Chiaradia and Da Croce 2008). Examination of specimens submitted to UF-IFAS and FDACS-DPI prompted the discovery that the species has been established in Florida for many years, having been confused with two similar native species. The confusion parallels historical misidentifications in Peru (Gomez 1999). To date, all vouchered specimens in Florida with host information were found feeding on leaves of Ligustrum japonicum Thunb. (Japanese privet).
Palpita Hübner includes several dozen tropical and temperate species globally, most of which feed on Oleaceae if the host is known. Palpita vitrealis (Rossi), better known by the synonym P. unionalis (Hübner), is a major pest of olive and jasmine in Europe and Asia (Yilmaz and Genç 2012). Palpita nigropunctalis (Bremer) in East Asia feeds on several oleaceous species, including ligustrum and lilac (Gotoh et al. 2011). The larvae commonly construct untidy webs of leaves and silk in which they consume the leaves and, in some species, also the fruit.
The initial detection in Florida was an infestation of ornamental privet trees in Sumter County in July 2012. The homeowner indicated that other infestations were unreported in the area. More specimens were subsequently found in the Florida State Collection of Arthropods (FSCA), the earliest of which were raised on privet in January 1980 at the Fort Lauderdale IFAS Agricultural Research Center. Vouchered adults from 1992 (Valrico, FL) and 1999 (St. Cloud, FL) were raised from larvae feeding on privet in nurseries. Several lots of Palpita larvae that may represent the same species have been collected on privet since the early 1980s.