Ampeloglypter sesostris

Ampeloglypter ampelopsis

Daktulosphaira vitifoliae

Ampeloglypter sesostris Lec.

The Grapecane Gall-maker is a small reddish-brown snout- beetle about one-eighth inch long, which lays its eggs in the canes, giving rise to galls about twice the diameter of the cane and 1 or 1.5 inches long, with a deep scar in one side. It has been noted as injurious in Ohio and West Virginia, and from the records seems to be generally distributed over the Eastern States, but is by no means a serious pest. 

Life History. The adult beetles appear in May and are gone by early July. They feed sparingly on the vine, making little pits in the tendrils, in the buds or bark of new canes or in the midribs on the underside of the leaves. The females soon lay their eggs and make the egg scars. These cause the galls and constitute practically the only injury to the vine. The eggs are laid just above a joint and beyond the outermost fruit, so that the injury does not interfere with the crop. A female eats out a small hole with her snout, in it lays a small yellowish-white egg, and fills up the hole with fibers scraped off from the surface of the cane. She then makes another hole immediately above this, but merely places a, drop of liquid in it and then fills it up with fibers in the same manner. Eight to a dozen holes are thus made in a row and filled. Very soon this wound causes a swelling of the vine, but the gall does not reach full size for six or eight weeks. On vines producing dark-colored fruit, the wood about the wound takes on a purplish color. The galls seem to have but little effect on the growth and vigor of the vine, except that the canes are more readily broken by the wind or in pruning. The larva is a little yellowish-white, footless grub about two-fifths inch long, which feeds about the egg-chamber and then burrows in the pith. It becomes full grown in eight to ten weeks, when it pupates within the burrow; the beetle emerges in late August, and hibernates over winter. 

As the scar in the side of the gall where the eggs were deposited remains open, a very large proportion of the larvae are subsequently parasitized by various chalcis, and tachina-flies, which will probably prevent the insect ever becoming much of a pest.

Ampeloglypter ater Lec.

This beetle is very similar to [the last](https://www.gallformers.org/gall/3111) except that it is black in color. Its native food-plant is the Virginia creeper, which it has deserted in West Virginia, and occasionally elsewhere, to attack grape. The species seems to occur generally through the Central and Eastern States. 

Life History. The life history is almost identical with that of the preceding species, the habit of the species differing only in the manner of oviposition. The eggs are laid in late May and early June. In laying the egg, the female deposits it in the same manner as does the previous species, and then instead of placing a series of holes in a row she makes them in a ring around the cane, only the first one containing an egg. She then goes to the next joint above and makes a series of holes around it, completely severing it, so that it hangs by a shred and soon drops. The little larva feeds in the pith of the joints on either side of the egg puncture, and these two joints die and drop to the ground. The larva becomes full grown in about a month and changes to a pupa in its burrows soon after the dead section drops, first filling the burrow with little pellets of fibres. Two weeks later the adult beetle emerges, appearing during late summer. The whole life cycle thus requires sixty-five to seventy days. The beetles hibernate over winter.

Phylloxera vastatrix

This insect is native east of the Rocky Mountains, where it has always lived upon wild vines and did not attract attention until it was imported into France about 1859, as it does practically no damage to the native American grapes. [ . . . ] 

This aphid exists in several forms, which injure both foliage and roots. On the leaves irregular spherical galls are produced, and the root-inhabiting form produces galls on the roots. The leaf-galls are very common on American grapes, but are no indication of the presence of the root form, as the roots are rarely injured where the foliage is covered with leaf -galls. On the other hand the European varieties rarely exhibit any leaf-galls, but are very susceptible to the root phylloxera, which multiplies without any external indication of its presence until the vine is seriously injured. The injury to the vine is not due so much to the sap taken from the vine by the myriads of aphids which may inhabit the roots, as to their poisonous effect on the root tissue and its subsequent decay. Wherever the phylloxera attack the roots, small swellings are produced, composed of soft tissue which soon decays. When such a gall is formed at the end of a young root, its growth is stopped, and on larger roots a decay sets in which finally girdles the root and all below the injured point dies. As all the roots become affected the vine stops growing, the leaves be- come sickly and yellowish, and the vine dies, and the phylloxera disappears from the rotting roots, so that the cause of the injury would be obscure were the nature of the injury not known. 

Life History. The life history of the phylloxera is a complicated one, involving four different forms of aphids; the leaf- gall form, the root or destructive form, the winged or colonizing form, and the sexual form. The winter eggs are deposited on the rough bark of the old wood in the fall and hatch the following spring. The young aphids settle on the leaves, where the irritation caused by their mouth-parts soon causes a depression around each which forms a gall projecting on the lower side of the leaf. "In about fifteen days the louse becomes a plump orange-yellow, full-grown, wingless female, and fills its gall with small yellow eggs, dying soon after. The eggs hatch in about eight days into young females again, like the parent, and migrate to all parts of the vine to form new galls. Six or seven generations of these wingless females follow one another throughout the summer, frequently completely studding the leaves with galls." In California the young hatching from the winter eggs go directly to the roots where they give rise to new colonies, there being no gall forms, according to Quayle. Where the leaf-gall females occur many of them probably migrate to the roots during the summer, and all do so with the approach of cold weather. In the spring the roots are attacked and a series of generations of wingless females multiply on them. As there are five to seven generations in a season and each female lays from 30 (Quayle) to 100 (Marlatt) eggs, it is evident that they will soon be numerous enough to destroy the vine. The root-inhabiting females are very similar to those in the leaf-galls, and are about one-twenty-fifth inch long when mature and half as long when young and active. They are light greenish-yellow in summer and darker in winter, and when numerous the infested roots look as if dusted in spots with powdered mustard, according to Quayle. He states that "the newly hatched insect is fairly active, and at first moves from place to place on the roots, but finally, when it reaches the egg-laying stage, inserts its sucking-tube into the root and remains fixed." During the late summer and early fall some of the root-lice develop into winged females which escape through cracks in the soil and fly to neighboring vines. They lay from two to four eggs beneath the loose bark on the old wood and soon die.

Insect pests of farm, garden and orchard