The genus Cactophagus is very closely related to Metamasius and, in fact, was treated as part of Metamasius by Vaurie (1967). However, G. Kuschel (in Wibmer & O'Brien 1986) resurrected the generic name Cactophagus, so we shall use this name. The recorded host records are C. validirostris from Aechmea bracteata in Veracruz, Mexico and from Vriesia sp. in Puebla, Mexico, and C. sanguinolentus from Aechmea bracteata in Veracruz (Zaragoza 1974).
Cholus spinipes was reported (under the synonym C. wattsi) as a pest of Ananas comosus (pineapple) growing in shaded conditions in Grenada, West Indies (Marshall 1922). Eggs are laid in the flower stalk, which the larvae mine, sometimes mining into the fruit. Adults feed on fruits, stalks, and leaves. A second species, C. vaurieae, in Venezuela has similar habits (O'Brien 1994). One unidentified specimen (Cholus sp.) was found in 1998 in a bromeliad collection in Sarasota. It was an apparently unmated female which perhaps arrived as a larva within an imported bromeliad. It belongs to an undescribed species which is recognized only from a few specimens from Panama, without host-plant information (Frank 1998a). Other species of Cholus attack palms and grasses.
Diastethus bromeliarum Champion is a species about which we have no life history information. Its name suggests it was collected from a bromeliad, and it probably eats bromeliads. It is possible that some of the five other species of Diastethus known from Mexico and Central America also do so. We list another 10 species of Diastethus from Brazil that have been reported to attack bromeliads.
One species each of three additional genera of the subfamily Baridinae (Bromegeraeus, Gravatageraeus, and Melampius) attack bromeliads in Brazil.
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