Abstract:The genus Spodoptera Guenée mainly distributed from tropical to subtropical regions throughout the world includes many pests of food crops, vegetables, forage crops and grasses. The African armyworm, Spodoptera exempta Walker has been known from Africa, South East Asia, parts of Australia to some Pacific islands as a pest of crops or pasture, however, no damage by this pest had been reported from Japan before 2010. From Japan, only five adult specimens had been collected before 2010. These specimens probably flew from the tropical region of Asia to Japan because S. exempta is a well known migratory pest in Africa. Severe damage of forage crops and grasses by this species was recognized for the first time from Japan at Nansei Islands in 2010. Therefore, survey using a synthetic sex pheromone for S. exempta was conducted by the Okinawa Prefectural Plant Protection Center and the Kagoshima Prefectural Institute for Agricultural Development. As a result, several species of Spodoptera were collected by the pheromone trap for S. exempta including S. exempta. We made a key to distinguish all eight Japanese species of Spodoptera mainly using male genitalia. Furthermore, we were able to distinguish six Japanese Spodoptera pest species using standard DNA barcoding.

As moths of the geometrid group usually live in forests and do not move long distances, they are considered to be valuable as environmental bio-indicators. Biodiversity data based on voucher specimens should have high quality and reliability. Here, we publish the records of the family Geometridae and the superfamily Pyraloidea (Pyralidae and Crambidae) with time of collection and location information, that is, latitude and longitude on the basis of the collection of Dr. Hiroshi Inoue deposited at Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, NARO (NIAES). The collection of Geometridae covers 653 records from 615 species, collected from 1926 to 1979. The collection of Pyraloidea covers 447 records from 418 species, collected from 1949 to 1985. For the purpose, all users can access the data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) portal site with open data license CC BY 4.0; all data is published in the GBIF through the Japan node of GBIF (JBIF). The detailed Metadata for this abstract published in the Data Paper section of the journal is available in MetaCat in JaLTER at http://db.cger.nies.go.jp/ JaLTER/metacat/metacat/ERDP-2020-21.1/jalter-en.

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