Rhino Beetle

Description:

About 4-5 cm. This beetle can be a serious pest.

Habitat:

Found at night in a bush-camp resturant next to a waterhole.

Notes:

The host plants are Cocos nucifera (coconut), Elaeis guineensis (African oil palm), Phoenix dactylifera (date-palm) and Washingtonia (wshington-palm). The adult feeds on the growing part of the palm, eventually producing V-shaped cuts through the leaflets of mature palm leaves. Severely attacked palms will die and remain standing but leafless. Eggs are laid in rotting vegetation, especially in the trunks of rotting palms: They are white and oval and about 3,5 mm long when freshly laid, later expanding to about 4 mm. Hatching takes place after 10-12 days. Each female lais about 50 eggs. The full-grown larvais soft, white and whrinkled and about 6 cm or more in lenght, usually found curled up in its characteristic C-shaped position in the moist and rotten vegetation on which it feeds. There are three larval instars and the total larval period lasts for two months. The pupal period is about three weeks and can be found at the same place as the larvae. The adult is a large, black and shiny beetle about 4 cm in length. It has a rhinocerous-type frontal horn which is well developed in the male and short in the female. They are mainly night active. The female beetle may live 3-4 months. (http://books.google.co.mz/books?id=U5dez...) Prevention and control: It is both uneconomic and impracticable to spray coconut palms at regular intervals to prevent attack by adult beetles. Cultural control is the most feasible method and includes planting palms at the same time, at a close regular spacing so that a continuous canopy of foliage develops; cutting down and destroying dead coconut palms by burning; and removing all crop residues and manures at the base of the coconut palms. Other methods involve trapping, physical removal of adults and killing the beetles in the bore holes with a pointed wire. (http://www.plantwise.org/KnowledgeBank/D...)