Prickly pear cactus

Weevil, seen in Morelia Michoacán.

Curculionidae. It is one of the most important families within the coleoptera order, it gathers countless species harmful to plants and it is at the same time one of the most numerous families in species. Its distinctive feature is the extension of the head into a "face" and its angled antennae. These insects are known as weevils and weevils.
Cactophagus spinolae "Prickly pear palm weevil"

TAXONOMY
Order: Coleoptera
Family: Dryophthoridae
Genre: Cactophagus
Species: Cactophagus spinolae (Gyllenhal)
(Sphenophorus spinolae Gyllenhall)
(Sphenophorus procerus Le Conte)

(Sphenophorus validus Le Conte)

(Cactophagus obliquefasciatus Chevrolat)
(Cactophagus subnitens Casey)
(Cactophagus rubronigrum Fischer)

(Cactophagus spinolae validus Kuschel)
(Metamasius spinolae Vaurie

VEGETATION: nopal, vegetable and tunero crops

HOSPEDERO: nopal vegetable Opuntia ficus-indica (L.) Miller

OBSERVATIONS:

In Mexico, the prickly pear palm weevil Cactophagus spinolae (Gyllenhal) is a primary pest in prickly pear crops. Their larvae move inside mature cladodes (more than one year old), they advance in the direction of the oldest cladode. They pierce the surface of the clasdodia for gas exchange, the plant responds with gummy secretions to cover the wound and prevent the entry of infectious agents. The galleries they form weaken the plant and can cause cladodes to detach. Later they develop their puparium and change to the next state, the pupa. They will remain inside until the following year, the increase in humidity, as a result of rainfall, will soften the puparium, which facilitates the adult's emergence. Same that occurs from May to October.
Adults are black with four red spots on the elytra and two more on the anterior part of the prothorax (Orduño, 2009), although in observations made in different producing regions, differences in the tonality of the spots and the size of grown ups. Which feed on nopalitos (young cladodes less than one month old), causing direct damage. It was discovered that males secrete an aggregation pheromone (Tafoya et al., 2007), although there are field evaluations, more studies are still required. to guarantee a trapping technique. In addition to cactus species (Opuntia spp.), M. spinolae is collected from the cactus known as pitahaya (Hylocereus sp) (Ramírez-Delgadillo, 2011).