| August 2014. This rather distinctive weevil recently turned up on Rarotonga. It was found it at the base of a golden cane palm (Dypsis lutescens).
The first suggestion was the West Indian sweetpotato weevil, Euscepes postfasciatus (Fairmaire). It is already recorded in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and PNG. EPPO mentions it in Cook Islands.
However, another member said that is was not the WI sweetpotato weevil. Although it has similar pale markings on the elytra, these differ both in shape and position, and also the body shape and the vestiture of the weevil are wrong (cf. the photos in Zimmerman’s Australian WeevilsVol. VI, pl. 430). It looks more like one of the native Pacific cryptorhynchines, although it was impossible to say which one from the photo.
And, the correct scientific name of the WI sweetpotato weevil is Euscepes batatae(G. R. Waterhouse), not E. postfasciatus. The situation is explained in Vol. 8 of the Catalogue of Palaearctic Coleoptera (2013), p 60.
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