• Korean journal of applied entomology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.9-15
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• 2008

This study was conducted to investigate the seasonal occurrence of chestnut weevil, Curculio sikkimensis. The chestnuts infected by the weevils were collected from Gongju, Buyeo, and Cheongyang in Chungnam Province, Republic of Korea. Investigation was focus on the escape period of chestnut weevil larvae from the fruits, invading time and vertical distribution in soil, survival rates of larvae during overwintering, emergence period, emergence rate, and sex ratio and longevity of adults. For precocious species, larvae escaped the chestnut from the mid-September to the early-October, middle species and slow species, were escaped from the late-September to the mid-October and from the early-October to the mid-November. After escaping from the chestnut fruits all of the larvae burrowed into the soil within 35 minutes. Overwintering larvae inhabited in the range of $0{\sim}48cm$ from the soil surface and highly distributed in the range of $18{\sim}36cm$. The 74.1 % of wintering chamber were distributed within $18{\sim}36cm$ from the surface. Survival rates observed were 38.0% in 1st year, 16.0% in 2nd years, and 2% in 3rd years, respectively. Seasonal occurrence period of C. sikkimensis was from the early-Aug. to early-Oct. and the optimal occurrence period was the early and mid-Sept. Emergence rate decreased to 8.4% in 1st year, 3.6% in 2nd years, and 0.8% in 3rd years, respectively. Sex ratio was showed in the range of 0.51-0.55. It is female biased ratio. Longevity of adults was 9.9 days for female and 8.9 days for male.