This exotic species is a sap-sucking insect that feeds on the cones and flowers of various resinous species. Endowed with a kind of pointed snout, the insect just over two centimeters long can penetrate the cone to feed, absorbing the forming pine nut. The result is the so-called ‘empty pine nuts’.
With a rare capacity for survival in a region where it has no natural enemies, given that it is an exotic species, Leptoglossus has no borders. In addition to absorbing the pine nut, it damages the cone while it is still forming — a cone takes three years to mature.
According to the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF), this exotic insect — which, remember, is more a pest threatening native forest and Portuguese exports (for example with the maritime pine) — arrived in Europe, more precisely to Northern Italy, already in 1999, “having acclimated and spread rapidly across several European countries.” Its presence in Portugal was confirmed in 2010 on the Troia Peninsula and in the north of the country.
After Spain, Portugal is currently the country with the largest area of umbrella pine. Thus, the Iberian Peninsula possesses about 75% of the world’s distribution area of umbrella pine, and in the last 10 years afforestation of umbrella pine in Portugal increased by more than 50%.
