Colorado potato beetle  The Colorado potato beetle ("Leptinotarsa decemlineata"), also known as the Colorado beetle, the ten-striped spearman, the ten-lined potato beetle or the potato bug, is a major pest of potato crops. It is approximately long, with a bright yellow/orange body and five bold brown stripes along the length of each of its elytra. Native to America, it spread rapidly in potato crops across America and then Europe from 1859 onwards. The Colorado potato beetle was first observed in 1811 by Thomas Nuttall and was formally described in 1824 by the American entomologist Thomas Say. The beetles were collected in the Rocky Mountains where they were feeding on the buffalo bur, "Solanum rostratum". The genus "Leptinotarsa" is assigned to the chrysolmelid beetle tribe "Doryphorini" (located in subfamily Chrysomelinae), which it shares with five other "genera": "Doryphora", "Calligrapha", "Labidomera", "Proseicela", and "Zygogramma". Adult beetles average in length and in width. The beetles are orange-yellow in colour with ten characteristic black stripes on the elytra. The species name "decemlineata", meaning 'ten-lined', derives from this feature. Adult beetles may, however, be visually confused with "L. juncta", the false potato beetle, which is not an agricultural pest. "L. juncta" also has alternating black and white strips on its back, but one of the white strips in the center of each wing cover is missing and replaced by a light brown strip. The orange-pink larvae have a large, nine segmented, abdomen and black head, prominent spiracles and may measure up to in length in their final instar stage. The beetle larva has four instar stages. The head remains black throughout these stages, but the pronotum changes colour from black in first- and second-instar larvae to having an orange-brown edge in its third-instar. In fourth-instar larvae, about half the pronotum is coloured light brown. This tribe is characterised within the subfamily by round to oval shaped convex bodies which are usually brightly coloured, simple claws which separate at the base, open cavities behind the procoxae, and a variable apicial segment of the maxillary palp. The beetle is native to North America, and is present in every state and province except Alaska, California, Hawaii, and Nevada.