Ampeloglypter sesostris

Madarus vitis, new species
The Grape-cane gall-curculio

The canes of the Concord vine are frequently found to have galls on the last year's growth, in the shape of an elongated knot or swelling which is generally situated immediately above or below a joint. This gall was formed the previous fall while the tender cane was growing and has almost invariably a longitudinal slit or depression on one side, dividing that side into two cheeks, which generally have a rosy tint. The gall is caused by a little footless, white cylindrical larva which measures 0,28 of an inch, and has a yellowish head, and some- what darker tawny jaws. It is minutely wrinkled transversely, and sparsely covered with minute white bristles; the three segments next to the head being prominently swollen underneath and the bristles attached to them look very much like legs, and doubtless to some extent perform the functions of legs. This larva indeed bears a very close general resemblance to that of the Potato Stalk-weevil, illustrated at page 93, Figure 37 «, and when taken out of its gall immediately curls up as in that figure. During the latter part of June this larva transforms within the cane to a pupa, also greatly resembling that figured at 5, on page 93, with the exception that it is much smaller, and that the wings and legs reach down three-fourths the length of the body instead of but one-half as in that species. Two weeks after it has thus transformed it becomes a beetle belonging to the great Curculio family. This little Curculio was considered a new species by Dr. LeConte in 1861, and as it has not, so far as I am aware, been described since that time, I subjoin a more complete description of it. [. . . ]

I think it highly probable that the gall of the Grape-cane Curculio is caused more by the punctures which the female beetle makes in depositing her egg, than by the irritations of the larva; I have found the larva where it had burrowed two and three inches up the cane away from the gall, without its having caused a corresponding swelling; though this has always been in the one-year-old cane.

First annual report of the noxious, beneficial and other insects of the State of Missouri