The EVIL WEEVIL WEB EXPERIENCE

The major pest that plagues rhododendrons is the strawberry root weevel, latin name
its the insect that makes the leaf notches in the summer months
and whose grubs sometimes girdle the stems in winter and kill the entire plant.

I keep a bug zapper- a light surrounded by an electrified grid- on the back porch with a barrel of water below it to collect the carcasses. Several times near the end of October, 2006, I found a root weevil floating in the barrel in the morning. One of these weevils went onto a film can until such time as I could get some close up pictures. After a month, I added a rhododendron leaf fragment to the container since the weevil was still alive.

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A strawberry root weevil captured and placed in an almost clear plastic 35 mm film can.

Besides being somewhat milky, the curved surface insured that every picture would show the flare of the strobe unit..

In this image, two polarizing filters were used. One was on the strobe light and the other one was on the camera lens, with the polarization set at right angles to the first filter. Most f the glare has been significantly reduced.

The Image is computer enhanced to reduce the effects of the film can through the use of increased color saturation and contrast.
The results are better but still not great.

All of the leaf notching came while the weevil was feeding
in the container A weevil can be a very heavy feeder.

A hungry weevil will eat 1 square centimeter of rhododendron leaf a day.

That's equivalent to a square of about 4 tenths of an inch on a side per day.

The new photographer-friendly cage is made of four microscope slides glued into a box, with end caps created from slide fragments.

The advantage of the all-glass box is that we can see the underside of the weevil very easily.

But even microscope slide glass is not perfectly defect free. Close-ups show that the glass imparts an overlay of fine distortion lines on the image.

Note that the head has the antennae,
the thorax has one pair of legs
and the abdomen has two pairs of legs.

Sometimes the little beastie just settles down in a corner for a long snooze.

What's there for a weevil to do besides eat?
Lots of food available on demand every day.

Some days weevils eat much more than on other days


Three views: The entire weevil looking down from the top. The three body sections are the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. Side view of the head and thorax Side view of the head with one foreleg and one antenna (with a know on the end) parallel to the inclination of the head.
Close-up view of the head showing the mandibles open. Also note that the entire body, including the antenna tips, are covered with bristles. The foot pad on the right edge of the picture is very interesting too.
	The weevil is clinging to the glass with pads of small bristles located near the terminal claws on the leg. This ventral view slows the two mandibles of the head located between the antennae and the feet. There is some distortion in the picture because of defects in the microscope slide.
Head-on view. Note that the antenna has one long segment coming out of the head, a swivelling joint and then a whole series of limited mobility segments (usually called an elbowed antenna) and ending in a hairy club-shaped tip.
	Here is a picture of a vampire weevil doing its evil weevil thing. The brown fangs sticking out of its mandibles are the chewing mouth parts that do the leaf notching that we are so familiar with.
Take a look at this scattered debris. If you have rhododendrons, you have lots and lots of this stuff beneath your plants. Ot, if you keep a weevil on your computer. you will have lots of this stuff on your hard drive.
	Here's some more of this stuff, the penny is just for scale. This is EVIL WEEVIL DOO DOO.
The abdomen of a weevil. The upper part is the outer 'shell' which is made from modified hindwings. The 'shell' is responsible for the satisfying "CRUNCH" when a root weevil is despatched with a pair of pliers. The underside is the soft abdomen and is also coveed with bristles. The three red circles near the lower right hand of the picture are the bristle pads on the tarsus just before the terminal claws on the leg. They enable the weevil to cling to glass-smooth surfaces.
	A weevil eats leaves at a prodigious rate. The remains have to go somewhere at the end of their journey through the digestive process. In case you missed the implication in the opening paragraph of this page, this weevil was flying at least 5 feet off the ground, at night, at the end of October (and before the first major freeze) at the time of its capture. She also floated in water for a number of hours without drowning.
A close-up view of one of the forelegs showing the bristle-covered leg, the bristle pads of the tarsi and the terminal claw. Beetle legs, including this one, have a dual claw at the end of the leg
	This particular root weevil finally gave her hife in the interest of science. She started captivity on a steady diet of fresh R. ponticum leaves. One night she accidentally dined on a leaf that had been contaminated with with the insecticide "Telstar". She did not survive.. She was buried in the deep shag of the carpet of the photo studio, awaiting the resurrection of of the body by the vacuum cleaner god.

The EVIL WEEVIL WEB EXPERIENCE

The major pest that plagues rhododendrons is the strawberry root weevel, latin name its the insect that makes the leaf notches in the summer months and whose grubs sometimes girdle the stems in winter and kill the entire plant.

The major pest that plagues rhododendrons is the strawberry root weevel, latin name
its the insect that makes the leaf notches in the summer months
and whose grubs sometimes girdle the stems in winter and kill the entire plant.