Metallic Flea Beetle Feeding Preferences on Crape Myrtle

摘要

Flea beetles in the genus Altica (Coleoptera: Ctirysomelidae) are primarily a problem on crape myrtle in the nursery and not of established landscape plantings. The few published accounts of this beetle (Mizell and Knox, 1993; Byers, 1997) mention the beetle as a pest in the South. Flea beetles can cause sudden, unpredictable, and dramatic defoliation of new growth during commercial production in a region from Oklahoma to Virginia and south to the Gulf Coast.