Perhaps the time is right for the community of buprestid specialists to collaborate in assembling data about host plants?
One of the failures of my recent world catalogue, although perhaps ‘failure’ is too strong, is the complete lack of “host plant data”. Others would say that I should have given the precise, verbatim, type locality data for each species, while some might think that an expanded picture of extant and historical distribution was overlooked.
In the past weeks, I have been assembling recorded (published) data on host plants and adding these data to the growing electronic version of the world catalogue that I hope will be available in another year or so. There are many published host plant records for Nearctic species (summarized in the catalogue by Nelson, et al. 2008) and with great thanks to Sadahiro Ohmomo, I now have a list of the larval host plants for the Japanese buprestid fauna. I’ve requested that several of the Australian colleagues consider assembling their respective field notes and rearing/breeding records into a supplement which will expand our collective knowledge on the Australian fauna and this has already begun. Tomás Moore is moving forward towards the publication of his monograph on the Chilean buprestids which will include host plant data. Little beyond that exists except amongst a relatively small number of papers that included host plant data for the African, Asian and Neotropical regions. However, the obvious glaring exception to my search is what was recently written to me by Svata Bílý who essentially confirmed my suspicion that most host plant data on the Palaearctic Buprestidae is based on that published by L. Schaefer (1950, not 1949!) and A. A. Richter (1949, 1950). I note that in the subsequent volumes by Cobos (1986a), Curletti (1994a), Mühle, et. al. (2000), Muskovits & Hegyessy (2002), Niehuis (2004), Sakalian (2003a) and Verdugo (2005c) for various countries or regions in western Europe, often reference is given to Schaefer’s host listings or that there is only given a list of plant genera associated with respective buprestids, not the very specific plant records that would be so much more useful.
And so how can this progress? Perhaps this void or need can be seen as a call to arms, inciting a real regional collaboration between colleagues from all countries in Europe or throughout the Palaearctic region. To assemble species-level host plant data will have a great benefit beyond our own interested group, both those extant and those to come. There will be great utility in having thorough lists of beetle and plant association records, e.g. to those in the ecology community, to those in the habitat restoration area, to those interested in pollination studies, and to those interested in invasive pest species, both plant and insect.
What I suggest is that someone in the Palaearctic region act as the collector and compiler of such a host plant database. There is a need to comb the literature and assemble all host plant data already published. But there is also the need to assemble and publish new records that may be lurking in the field notebooks of many who have assembled many rich collections which very good notes on the specimen labels, but who have yet to share these data with others. Eventually those specimens will be transferred to larger institutional collections and perhaps someday there will be specimen-level databases where just the push of a button will allow such data to be collected for someone on the other side of the planet. But why wait when there are many of us now to share the effort?
There seems to be a general agreement that we are firstly interested in the true host(s) of each species, that being the larval host plant or plants. Many adults feed on the foliage of their larval host, while others do not. Any many adults frequent the foliage or flowers of plants unrelated to their larval hosts. I suggest that we assemble host data into the following categories:
Larval host(s) – this is verified through rearing or breeding specimens from identified plant material or from cutting specimen from pupal cells.
Adult host(s) – three categories:
“Adults on” – which does not verify feeding nor larval association
“Adults feeding on” – which at least signifies some level of obligate association between plant and beetle
“Adults on flower(s) of” – indicating both the source of nutrition and a possible role as pollinator
However, if no one in the region is interested in taking on such a challenge, I can either choose to limit what I add about the buprestid species of that region to what I can easily find in the volumes of Schaefer and Richter (assuming I can find it in a language and alphabet I cannot read), or I can volunteer to assemble the host data that any of you might wish to send. If the later is the case, I would only ask that you please indicate what is already published and what needs to be published before being added to electronic catalogue.
The climate is changing, some species will be see huge changes in their distributions and we fear that many will be lost if we cannot mitigate and reverse the course the climate is on now. Should we not at least have a good record of what was here before it is lost?
N.B. All references above to specific publications can be found in the main catalogue bibliography (here).
