Wetas and Others

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 100, 21 January 1933, Page 16

Wetas and Others

(By

J. DRUMMOND, F.L.S.,

F.Z.S, for ‘'The Dominion.”)

FAIRLY large insect, about an inch long, with a shiny black head, A a mahogany body, powerful mandibles, and spiny legs, has been / % ent by Mr. A. K.'Wylie, Bassett Road. Reinuera. Auckland, With t—JW anxious inquiry as to whether it is liable to damage his house or bis furniture. The answer is that, although it is as ugly as sin. and looks capable of damaging anything, it is not destructive in the direction feared. It is much less to be dreaded than the tiny, inconspicuous. innocent-looking house-borer, Anobium domesticum, a world-wide pest, whose grubs chew wood and do damage that nobody can estimate, Mr. Wylie's insect is a member of the common species of weta. It was found inside his house, into which, evidently? it had wandered. Members of this species. Hemideina megacepliala. can bore, and do bore, making large round holes, but they pay attention only to’rotten logs and old trees, sometimes finding a suitable dwelling tinder loose bark.

The species is plentiful in New Zealand, its native land. It has no other country, but in Australia it has close relatives., equally ugly, called • king crickets. Wetas belong to a notable, insect family which thrives surprisingly in the Tropics, Included in it are the long-horned locusts and the eave-locusts. New Zealand is represented in it by at least forty species. Australia by no fewer than 193. a proportion usually disclose! when comparisons are made with the insects of the Dominion and oil the Commonwealth. ’ln the order of the Orthoptera. to which the wetas and their allies belong. New Zealand has about eighty species, Australia has 1110. It is the same almost all along the line, from the smallest to the "reatest. Australia has about 37.080 known species of insects, New Zealand has about 8150. The Dominion is about 25 per cent, poorer than the Commonwealth in species of insects, a poverty that causes New Zealanders no lamentation except among entomologists, in view of the fact that the insects’ fecundity and the insect menace are one,of man’s most perplexing problems. The greatest disproportion is in the Lepidoptera, the moths and butterflies. Australia has about 8000 species of them. New Zealand has about 1200. The most unaccountable difference is in the. butterflies. While Aus-

tralia has 335 species. New Zealand has only sixteen. Among these are several, notably the Painted Lady and the Wanderer, which are found in both countries, and some that migrate to New Zealand, but, apparently, do not breed here. Australia lias ninety-two species of the Hesperidae butterflies, popularly called skippers. The family ranges over almost the whole world, but is unknown -in New Zealand or in Greenland. New Zealand has none of the large, swiftly-flying swallow-tails: Australia has seventeen species, three found nowhere else. The blues, coppers and hairstreaks, all associated in a large single butterfly family, are well represented in Australia, poorly in New Zealand. A little blue is very plentiful in the North Island and in Nelson Province. In the rest of the South Island. its place is taken by another blue, a close ally. New Zealand’s butterfly fauna is made notable by a rare alpine species, almost completely black, which sports itself on snow-clad hills of the Southern Alps, and would adorn any collection in the world. Butterflies are roughly distinguished from moths by their clubbed or swollen antennae, or feelers. This division of the Lepidoptera is convenient, but is not scientific. Entomologists will say that butterflies tire more closely related to the higher forms of moths than the higher moths tire to the lower moths. The most primitive Lepidoptera known, the family Mierotorygidae. tiny moths, have their beadquarters in New Zealand, which has seventeen species: Australia litis only two. On the other hand, all the world except New Zealand has eggar-moths, which have hairy bodies and spend their chrysalis stage in cocoons of silken hair.

The Wanderer butterfly. Danaida plexippus. has fascinated Mr. T. Loeaster, Titirangi. Auckland. He describes it as the most notable insect in New Zealand. He has been interested in insects all his life, but never has found any other member of the insect class so attractive. He states that it is harmless. living on the milkweed in the caterpillar stage. He believes that it has a natural enemy in New Zealand, which checks its increase and makes it rare here, no matter how plentiful it may be in other countries. "When you come to think of it.” he writes, “It is surprising that such a lovely creature is little known here, even by lovers of insects.”