D. H. Blake.
Note on the Habits of Sphenophorus pontederioe.
Psyche 31(6):311, 1924.

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19241 Note on the Habits of Sphenophorus pondeteria Chttn. 311 NOTE ON THE HABITS OF SPHENOPHORUS
PONTEDERIB CHTTN.
Bureau of Entomology, Washington, D. C.
In late August of 1924 the ponds of eastern Massachusetts were very low and in some instances dry because of a long drought. In two ponds in Stoughton and Easton beds of pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata L.) outside water level were brown and dying, while other plants nearby, although not any more supplied with pond water than the dying ones, were apparently healthy. Investigation showed that the dead patches of plants were heavily infested with larvae, pups, and newly emerged adults of Sphenophorus pontederice Chttn. The thick rootstocks were completely hollowed out and rotten, and each plant contained several larvae or pupae. So disintegrated were these plants that when one took hold of the leaves and stalks they separated at once from the rootstock. The larvae were most frequently found tunneling the rootstocks, but when they became mature they generally bored up into the flowering stem an inch or two above the earth to pupate.
In several stalks a dipterous pu~arium was found beside the remains of the larva, plainly a parasite of Sphenophorus. The adult fly that emerged has been identified by Dr. J. M. Aldrich as Lixophaga variabilis Coq.
This parasite, closely allied to the
parasite (Lixophaga diatrcece Tns.) of the sugar-cane borer (Diatrcea saccharalis Fab.) has been reared in one instance, ac- cording to Dr. Aldrich, from Lixus scrobicollis Lec. at Dallas, Tex.
In another case a carabid larva was found feeding on a pupa. Several carabid and staphylinid beetles also occurred suspiciously near the infested plants.




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