Vesperus xatarti is a species of brown coloured beetle in the family Vesperidae, found in the Balearic Islands, France, and Spain.
The vine beetle ( Vesperus xatarti ) is a beetle belonging to the new family Vesperidae, recently separated from the more extensive and well-known family Cerambycidae of elongated-bodied beetles with very long antennae, feared for its effects on fruit trees , olive trees and especially vines .
Adults have a dark brown body with very marked sexual dimorphism. Males measure 20-25 mm in length, not including the antennae that are longer than the body. They are slender and their elytra completely cover their abdomen. The males look like a typical cerambycid or capricorn (photo 1). Females are larger, about 40 mm in length, their antennae are shorter than the body and they have a large, swollen abdomen that the elytra, the same size as those of the males, do not cover. Females resemble oil beetles (family Meloidae ) due to their short elytra. At the end of the abdomen they have a retractable ovipositor that they take out to lay eggs. Images 2 and 3 show a fertilised female with a very swollen abdomen that has not managed to lay eggs. Males fly; on the other hand, the heavier females only walk. Adults emerge from the nymph in late autumn or early winter. They live only as long as necessary for reproduction. Their activity is predominantly nocturnal.
The fertilised female climbs onto a vine or similar trunk, where, using a crack in the bark, she lays a hundred white eggs, like grains of rice, together in a plate of an adhesive that solidifies on contact with the air. The eggs hatch in spring. They become larvae that drop to the ground. The larvae spend 2 or 3 years inside the soil, eating the small tender roots and gnawing the larger ones until they reach the root collar or the graft area. These larvae have a white body with a head that is not very distinct, soft, segmented and more cubic than elongated, with two powerful, separated and dark mandibles at the front end. These short, radicicolous larvae distinguish the Vesperidae from the Cerambycidae , whose larvae are elongated and usually xylophagous.
Obviously, it is the root larvae of the chestnut beetle, which are difficult to see because they live in the soil, that are damaging the vine; not the adults that appear in winter. Vines that suffer from the attack of chestnut beetle larvae in the roots lose vitality and, if they are recently planted, they can die. Chestnut beetle infestation in a vineyard usually occurs in stands. Chestnut beetle is combated in winter with pheromone traps to attract the males, with stakes covered with burlap or corrugated cardboard to induce the females to lay their eggs in them, with adhesive strips around the trunks at their lower part so that the females stick to them before they manage to lay their eggs and directly removing the egg plates from the bark.
