PROC. ENTOMOL. SOC. WASH. 97(4), 1995, pp. 894-895 Note Sassafras albidum: A New Host Plant Record for Larval Melanolophia signataria (Lepidoptera: Geometridae) from Central Virginia Larvae of Melanolophia signataria (Walker) have been reported to feed on a wide variety of woody plants in eastern North America. Recorded host plants in-clude: Abies spp. (firs), Abies balsamea (L.) Miller (balsam fir), Acer spp. (maples) Al-nus spp. (alders), Betiila spp. (birches), Bet-iila alleghaniensis Britton (yellow birch), Larix laricina (DuRoi) K. Koch (tamarack), Picea spp. (spruces), Picea glauca (Moench) Voss (white spruce), Populus spp. (poplars), Quercus spp. (oaks) and Ul-mus americana L. (American elm) (Mc-Guffin. 1944. Canadian Entomologist 76: 124; Forbes 1948. Lepidoptera of New York and neighboring states. Part II. Mem-oir 274. Cornell University Agricultural Ex-periment Station; Tietz 1952. The Lepidop-tera of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Agri-cultural Experiment Station, Pennsylvania State College, State College, PA; Covell. 1984. A field guide to the moths of eastern North America. Houghton Mifflin Co. Bos-ton, MA). Forbes (op cit) noted past con-fusion between larval host plants of M. sig-nataria and the closely related M. canadar-ia (Guenee) and questioned the validity of some host plant records for both species. In this note I report a new, verified host plant record for larval M. signataria from central Virginia. During early June 1991, I collected larval M. signataria from leaves of sassafras. Sas-safras albidum (Nutt.) Nees, growing in a forest edge near Lovingston, Nelson Coun-ty, Virginia, as part of a survey of the insect herbivore complex of S. albidum. Field-col-lected M. signataria larvae were confined to separate recloseable plastic sandwich bags containing fresh leaves of S. albidum to determine: 1) if larvae actually feed and develop on S. albidum: or 2) if captures were incidental on a non-food host. Captive larvae of M. signataria fed readily on leaves of S. albidum, pupated, and emerged as adults within one month of collection, indicating that S. albidum is an acceptable host plant for larval feeding and develop-ment. Cursory field surveys conducted in the same area during 1992 again noted the occurrence of larvae of M. signataria feed-ing on leaves of S. albidum, confirming the trophic association between insect and plant at this site. Melanolophia signataria was by far the least numerous member of the larval lepi-dopteran fauna on S. albidum at the Vir-ginia site (only three larvae could be col-lected for rearing in 1991), which was dominated by Caloptilia sassafrasella (Chambers) (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae), Epimecis hortaria (F) (Lepidoptera: Geo-metridae) and Papilio troilus L. (Lepidop-tera: Papilionidae). It is uncertain if the rel-ative rarity of larval M. signataria on S. albidum at the Virginia study site is due to the infrequence of the species in the area in general, to the presence of more desir-able primary host plants on which adults preferentially oviposit, or because larvae feed on such a broad array of host plants that they are widely dispersed across nu-merous hosts. I thank Dr. D. C. Ferguson and M. A. Solis, of the Systematic Entomology Lab-oratory, Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., for identifying reared adults of M. signataria. Dr. M. A. Solis (Systematic Entomology Laboratory) and
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