Pest categorisation of non-EU Pissodes spp.

Abstract

The Panel on Plant Health performed a pest categorisation of the non-EU Pissodes spp. (Coleoptera: Curculionidae). They constitute a well-defined taxon, with non-EU species distributed in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, China, Japan, Korea, Russia and South Africa, some of which are recognised as severe pests of conifers, mainly Pinus spp. and Picea spp., or vector pathogens. The immature stages either live in the phloem and cambium of healthy, weakened or dead trees, or in the terminal shoots of living trees. They are listed as quarantine pests in Annex IAI of Directive 2000/29/EC. Plants for planting, branches of conifers and non-squared wood are considered as pathways. The pest can also disperse by hitchhiking, and fly over kilometres. The adults are long-lived (up to 4 years). They feed by puncturing the bark of stems or shoots. Females lay eggs in chewed-out cavities in the bark. The life cycle varies with species and local climatic conditions. At the end of the larval stage, the larva excavates a pupal cell between the sapwood and the bark, in the sapwood or in terminal shoots. Pissodes spp. overwinter as adults in the litter or as larvae or teneral adults in the galleries or pupal cells. The current geographic range of the non-European Pissodes spp. suggests that many of them may establish in the EU territory, where their hosts are widely present. We list some species which, if introduced to the EU, would most probably have an economic impact on plantations or may interfere with forest ecosystem processes although they are mainly abundant and damaging in intensively managed monocultures. All criteria for considering those non-EU Pissodes spp. as potential quarantine pests are met. The criteria for considering them as non-regulated quarantine pests are not met because they are absent from the EU territory.