A WHITE COLOR MORPH OF THE COLORADO POTATO BEETLE, LEPTINOTARSA DECEMLINEATA (COLEOPTERA: CHRYSOMELIDAE)

Abstract

The Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata (Say), is distributed throughout the world and is an occasional pest of potatoes in Atlantic Canada. During the course of rearing Colorado potato beetles for behavioral studies at the Fredericton Research Station I obtained a strain of beetles which differs from the normal brown morph in being predominantly white. Similar coloring occurs in larvae and pupae and in young female and male adults. The eggs are light yellow instead of the usual orange-yellow. Such an albinic mutant has been previously reported in the United States by Tower (1906) and named L. pallida. Tower found the white mutant to be true-breeding and widely distributed, occurring both in nature and in laboratory colonies. Such a mutant has not been reported since and this is the first record of a white morph in Canada.