Xylosandrus crassiusculus (Motschulsky)

Beaver, R. A. & Liu, L. Y., 2010, An annotated synopsis of Taiwanese bark and ambrosia beetles, with new synonymy, new combinations and new records (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae), Zootaxa 2602, pp. 1-47 : 33

127. Xylosandrus crassiusculus (Motschulsky)

Phloeotrogus crassiusculus Motschulsky, 1866: 403 .

Distribution: Native to and widespread through the Oriental region, extending North to Japan and Korea, and East to New Guinea, Fiji and Samoa; presumably originally imported to tropical Africa, but now widespread in the Afrotropical region; established in the southern United States. Recorded from Taiwan as its synonym, Xyleborus semiopacus Eichhoff ( Nobuchi 1967) . [6]

Hosts: Strongly polyphagous ( Schedl 1963; Wood & Bright 1992). Recorded from Cinnamomum camphora (Lauraceae) in Taiwan by Murayama (1934a as Xyleborus ebriosus Niijima ).

Biology: The biology has been described by Beeson (1930), Browne (1961), Schedl (1963) (all as Xyleborus semiopacus ), and Beaver (1988) amongst others. The ambrosia fungus is a species of Ambrosiella ( Kinuura 1995) . This is a species of economic importance because, like Xylosandrus compactus , it can attack and breed in healthy shoots and twigs. This can result in the introduction of pathogenic fungi ( Sreedharan et al. 1991; Davis & Dute 1997). It seems to be an infrequent pest in the Oriental and Afrotropical regions, although attacks on transplants have been recorded (e.g. Browne 1968). In the southern United States, attacks on healthy orchard trees and tree saplings have occurred causing economic loss ( Kovach & Gorsuch 1985).