Molorchus ishiharai, a species occurring in Russian Far East, Japan and Korea, has been described from Japan by Kazuo Ohbayashi in 1936 [▽]. Females of M. ishiharai lay eggs in dying or freshly dead twigs of living spruces (Picea) during May and June. Young larvae feed subcortically create irregular in sapwood impressed galleries plugged densely with fine frass. Mature larvae enter the wood, leaving exit hole plugged with frass, and create pupal cells at the end of the gallery. Pupation and pupal development completed during autumn, hatched beetles overwinter in pupal cells and emerge in the following spring [✧].

Body length:	7 - 8 mm
Life cycle:	1 year
Adults in:	May - June
Host plant:	spruce (Picea)
Distribution:	Russian Far East, Japan and Korea

The depicted female beetle was collected in Okeanskaya (Океанская) railway station environs (Vladivostok, Primorsky krai, Far Eastern Federal District, Russia) on June 7-11, 2015.

Collected by Sergey Ivanov

---

[☆]
Ohbayashi K.:
New Longicorn-Beetles from Japan.
The Transactions of the Kansai Entomological Society 7: 11-15, 1936.

[✧]
Cherepanov A.I.:
Cerambycidae of Northern Asia, Volume 2 - Cerambycinae Part I.
Amerind Publishing, New Delhi: 304pp [pages 91-95 as Molorchus kobotokensis kunashiricus Tsherepanov, 1981], 1988. [download ]

Hayashi M.:
Additions to the knowledge of the genus Molorchus from Japan (Coleoptera : Cerambycidae).
Entomological Review of Japan 1: 29-33, 1949. [download ]