Rhynchophorus ferrugineus

This Curculionidae originates in Southeast Asia and Melanesia, where he is responsible for serious damage to crops of Cocos nucifera. As a result of trade in specimens of the species has infested palms reached in the eighties the UAE and from there it spread in the Middle East and in almost every country in the southern basin of the Mediterranean Sea, rising up to Spain in 1994, subsequently reached Corsica and the French Riviera. Italy is the first report in 2004 and is due to a nursery in Pistoia, which had imported the plants from Egypt in 2005 is reported in Sicily and then quickly spread to the north of the peninsula, arriving in Campania, bringing death to hundreds palm trees in public parks and private gardens in Lazio, Tuscany and is finally back in Liguria, Marche, Abruzzo and Puglia.
For the historian of trees Antimo Palumbo the parasite could lead to the extinction of the palm trees in the city of Rome by 2015.
The cause of the spread is mainly trade in specimens of palm infested from the insect and not recognized as such.

(an article by Sabrina Mancinelli)