Actia pilipennis (Fallen, 1810)

Scaramozzino, Pier Luigi, Loni, Augusto & Lucchi, Andrea, 2017, A review of insect parasitoids associated with Lobesiabotrana (Denis & Schiffermueller, 1775) in Italy. 1. DipteraTachinidae and HymenopteraBraconidae (Lepidoptera, Tortricidae), ZooKeys 647, pp. 67-100 : 73-74

Actia pilipennis (Fallen, 1810) Fig. 1

Actia pilipennis Scaramozzino et al. (in press).

Italian distribution of reared parasitoids.

Tuscany: Scaramozzino et al. (in press).

Distribution.

Palearctic species widely distributed, present, with few exceptions, all over Europe; to the east it reaches the Kuril Islands and Japan through southern Siberia and Mongolia ( Andersen 1996).

Host range.

It is a rather polyphagous species: little more than fifteen hosts are known, mostly belonging to the family Tortricidae ( Mesnil 1963, CABI 2016b). Martinez (2012) points out that this species has been obtained by Sparganothis pilleriana (Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775), another important tortricid pest of the grapevine, but, curiously, it has not been found on the European grapevine moth yet. Recently, Delbac et al. (2015) obtained a single specimen of this tachinid fly from Lobesia botrana in a Bordeaux vineyard. Unlike Phytomyptera nigrina (see below), in this case the maggot of Actia pilipennis abandons the dead caterpillar and pupate nearby.

Ecological role.

During a research carried out in the natural reserve of Migliarino-San Rossore-Massaciuccoli, Pisa), we have obtained quite often specimens of this Tachinid from larvae of the three generations of EGVM and from larvae of Cacoecimorpha pronubana ( Hübner, 1799), both living on the shoot tips of Daphne gnidium ( Scaramozzino et al. in press). In the natural reserve, the species has been raised in small number by EGVM from 2012 to 2015. In 2014 the overall rate of parasitism was quite low, not even reaching 1%.