Tribolium (Tribolium) destructor Uyttenboogaart, 1933

Tribolium (Tribolium) destructor Uyttenboogaart, 1933

Materials examined. IaȘi County, near: Bârnova Forest , 46.989703°N / 27.687814°E, 21.V.2013, under bark, Cosmin-Ovidiu Manci leg. (1 specimen), COMC ( Fig. 3 A View FIGURE3 ) GoogleMaps .

Collecting conditions. The specimen collected near Dobrovăț was found under the bark of a dead common beech ( Fagus sylvatica L.).

Distribution. This species originated in Africa ( Bousquet et al. 2018), but it is now distributed worldwide, except Australia ( Qin et al. 2023). Tribolium (T.) destructor was first recorded in Germany in 1912 ( Geisthardt 1983). For a more detailed overview of the global distribution in Europe, see Iwan et al. (2020). Romania is a new country record.

Notes. T. destructor is morphologically close to T. confusum ( Gorham 1991) , another Tribolium species recorded in Romania, but also molecularly ( Angelini & Jockusch 2008). The two species can be differentiated on the basis of the shape of the epistoma—rounded at the eye in T. destructor , with large punctures centrally on the pronotum and in the elytral striae, pronotum widest at half-length to epistoma subangulate at the eye and small punctures in T. confusum ( Gorham 1991) .

Tribolium destructor is a primary pest of stored products ( Reynolds 1944). It has been found in various environments and can equally colonize anthropic and natural habitats ( Linsley 1944; Gren 2003), thus facilitating its establishment ( Ikin et al. 1999). The species appears to have evolved as a saprophytic insect and is known to occur naturally under the bark of trees, in dead wood, and occasionally in the nests of some Hymenoptera ( Arnaud et al. 2005). The species is not known to fly ( Mathlein 1943), so long-distance spread relies on human transport in grain ( Ikin et al. 1999) or from shops, mills, and bakeries to homes. Howard (1987) reported that olefins are present in defensive secretions, and Hasan (2001) demonstrated that T. destructor is more radioresistant and lives longer than other Tribolium species.

This may be as economically important as other serious pests, such as T. confusum and T. castaneum ( Bousquet 1990) .