Robert S. Anderson. 1998. Weevils (Curculionoidea) in Smith, I.M., and G.G.E. Scudder, eds. Assessment of species diversity in the Montane Cordillera Ecozone. Burlington: Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network, 1998.

WEEVILS (CURCULIONOIDEA)

(excluding Scolytidae, Platopodidae)

Robert S. Anderson

CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT

As noted by Blades and Maier (1996) for arid land arthropods in general, a number of arid land weevil species reach their northern distributional limits in the Southern Okanagan Basin of British Columbia. Many of these species are represented in British Columbia (and Canada) by only one or a very few collection records and are candidates for rare and endangered status within the province. The number of species known from this region by only one or a few records combined with the threat of habitat loss through agricultural development and rapidly expanding urban development (Blades and Maier 1996) has attracted the attention of conservationists and has resulted in the development of regional conservation strategies (Blades and Maier 1996). Unfortunately, only recently has attention turned to arthropods as indicators for use in ecosystem management (Kremen et al. 1993; Finnamore 1996), consequently because the state of knowledge of the systematics and distributions for some taxa is poor, further studies and inventories within this region are needed to assess the actual taxonomic status and geographic distributions of these apparently rare species in Canada.

Somewhat paradoxically, at least two such species of Otiorhynchinae (Cercopedius artemisiae and Omias saccatus) proposed herein as candidates for rare and endangered status within British Columbia are occassionally recorded as localized pests on cultivated fruit trees. Perhaps such local occurences of otherwise infrequently recorded species are due to loss of local native habitat forcing adults of these species onto adjacent cultivated fruit trees as a source of food? The issue of effects of natural habitat loss on the potential for some species to attack nearby cultivated crops on a regional scale needs further investigation.