Pityogenes bidentatus (Herbst, 1784)

Beaver, Roger A., Ghahari, Hassan & Sanguansub, Sunisa, 2016, An annotated checklist of Platypodinae and Scolytinae (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) from Iran, Zootaxa 4098 (3), pp. 401-441 : 413-414

Pityogenes bidentatus (Herbst, 1784)

Distribution in Iran. West Azarbaijan ( Samin et al. 2011).

General distribution. Europe, Israel, Kazakhstan, Turkey, through Russia to Mongolia and Japan. Introduced into North America .

Biology. The species usually breeds in Pinus , but sometimes also in Picea and Abies (Pinaceae) . Recorded in Iran from Picea orientalis (Pinaceae) ( Samin et al. 2011). The biology and ecology is described by Chararas (1962) and Schedl (1962). The interactions between the species and other scolytines attacking pine have been studied by Amezaga and Rodríguez (1998). Tunset et al. (1993) provide evidence for primary attraction to pine logs, but the species is usually attracted to suitable host material by the male-produced aggregation pheromone which attracts both sexes ( Byers et al. 2000). The response to the pheromone is reduced by volatiles from non-host plants, and also by host tree volatiles when in flight, but not when walking, enabling the beetle to avoid non-host trees, but to find suitable breeding sites on a tree more easily ( Byers et al. 2000, 2004, 2012).