PROC. ENTOMOL. SOC. WASH. 89(3), 1987, pp. 489-499 ON THE IMMATURE STAGES OF PSALYDOLYTTA FUSCA (COLEOPTERA: MELOIDAE) Richard B. Selander and Alida A. Laurense (RBS) Department of Genetics and Development, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, U.S.A.; (AAL) Integrated Pest Management Project, Crop Protection Service Department, Ministry of Agriculture, Yundum, Western Divi-sion, The Gambia. Abstract.— Egg masses laid by 27 females of Psalydolytta fusca (Olivier) from The Gambia contained a mean of 125.2 eggs. Mean incubation time at 27°C was 22.3 days in 19 masses that produced larvae. Within individual egg masses the hatching period extended over a period of 2-9 days (mean 5.1). Anatomical characteristics of the triungulin (first instar) larva, described in detail, confirm that Psalydolytta is an epicautine. The larva is the largest known in Meloidae and has unusually abundant setae on the dorsum of the head and body. Triungulin larvae of P. fusca and first grub larvae presumed to represent this species were found in egg pods of the grasshopper Cataloipusfuscocoemleipes (Sjostedt) at Tumani Tenda, Western Division, The Gambia. This is the first record of a meloid preying on an acridid of the subfamily Epyrepocnemidinae. The genus Psalydolytta Peringuey is rep-resented in Africa by 42 species and in India by an additional 10 (Kaszab, 1954; Saha, 1979; Selander, 1986). In both regions adults feed primarily or exclusively on grasses, in-cluding wild species of Andropogon and Cymbopogon as well as cultivated species of Eleucine, Oryza, Panicum, Pennisetum, Setaria, Sorghum, and Zea. Feeding, which generally occurs at night, destroys flowers and developing grains. When adults are nu-merous they may seriously reduce crop yields or, at worst, destroy an entire harvest. In addition, adults attracted to lights at night in public places are sometimes a nuisance because, when crushed against the skin, they cause blistering and other irritation (Gig-lioli, 1965; Zethner et al., 1985; and other references in Selander, 1986). In the taxonomic literature of the Meloi-dae Psalydolytta has been associated con-sistently with the genus Epicauta Dejean, which is assigned, together with its close relatives, to a separate tribe or subtribe of Meloinae (e.g., Kaszab, 1954, 1959, 1969; Selander, 1955; MacSwain, 1956; Saha, 1979). Indeed, there is little to distinguish Psalydolytta as a genus apart from Epicauta except the peculiar conformation of the mandibles of the adult, and even this is par-alleled to a certain extent in some Nearctic and Ethiopian species that undoubtedly be-long in Epicauta. The mandibles in Psaly-dolytta are enlarged, strongly bent backward (vaulted), and do not overlap distally as they do in most Meloidae. It has been conjec-tured that these modifications are in some way adaptive in feeding on the inflores-cences of wild grasses (Selander, 1986). Ad-ditional evidence for associating Psalydo-lytta with Epicauta is found in Fletcher's (1914) report that young larvae of the In-dian P. rouxi (Castelnau) fed freely on the eggs of the pyrgomorphid Colemania
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