New Zealand Journal of Zoology abstracts

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Australian lucerne leafroller, Merophyas divulsana (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), in New Zealand

BRIAN PATRICK

Department of Conservation
P.O. Box 5244
Dunedin, New Zealand

JOHN DUGDALE

Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research
Private Bag 92 170
Auckland, New Zealand

Abstract  The Australian lucerne leafroller (LLR), Merophyas divulsana (Walker) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), first recorded from New Zealand in Central Otago, is now known from northern and eastern sites in the North Island and from Westland. In New Zealand it has been found associated with Lotus pedunculatus, but not with lucerne. Adults are dark grey ventrally, with grey hindwings, thereby differing from the endemic M. leucaniana, which is pallid ventrally with pale whitish fawn hindwings. The adults are thought to have been carried to New Zealand in a low pressure system (depression) during 1987-88, at a time of high population levels in eastern New South Wales. M. divulsana adults from New Zealand agree in genitalic details with specimens in CSIRO, Canberra, characteristic of populations in lucerne below the 200 m contour in north-eastern New South Wales.

Keywords Australian lucerne leafroller; Merophyas divulsana; first record; host plants; Central Otago; New South Wales; pheromones; New Zealand records; dispersal; trans-Tasman colonisation

New Zealand Journal of Zoology, 1994, Vol. 21: 305-308

0301-4223/2103-0305 $2.50/0   (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand 1994

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (457K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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