Oryctes rhinoceros, commonly known as the rhinoceros beetle is an important agricultural pest that is known to inflict serious damage on young oil palm trees. Many researches have been conducted on its development, life cycle, habitat, management and genomic variation ever since the need to understand this pest arose. Oryctes rhinoceros is among the longest present agricultural pest in Malaysia and it has witnessed the formulation and implementation of various phases of control and management strategies. To date, research and development activities are still ongoing in Malaysia for the successful management of this pest. In this review, we look into details on the characteristics of this pest, the modes of its introduction into Malaysia, as well as the events that helped to establish and contribute to the proliferation of this pest as a major oil palm threat in Malaysia. The progressive development of various research and development activities concerning the management and control of this pest are also highlighted.

Aim: This study aims to understand the distribution of Pomacea spp. in various rice fields of Peninsular Malaysia. Place and Duration of study: The study was conducted at twenty five rice fields from five states in Peninsular Malaysia (Selangor, Perak, Penang, Kedah and Kelantan) during the sowing and harvesting of off rice season-2013. Methodology: This study was carried out on rice fields of one acre in size which were further divided into four blocks. A 0.5m 2 quadrate was used for sampling and snails within the quadrate were collected, counted and identified based on their shell morphology by the experts. Results: Based on this study, Pomacea maculata was more abundant and widely distributed as compared to Pomacea canaliculata. Rice fields in Perak showed the highest population distribution of Pomacea spp. during both sowing and harvesting of rice.

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Morphometry is one of the methods that can be useful in establishing taxon identity. Morphometrics of Pomacea spp in paddy fields of Peninsular Malaysia has not been studied, hence, poorly understood. Morphometric measurement were carried out on shell and operculum characters for six populations of Pomacea spp from paddy fields of peninsula Malaysia to assess ecotype disparity for those characters among the different populations. Results revealed that significant disparity with respect to the assessed characters exists among the populations from different rice ecologies sampled. The highest value for shell length, body whorl height, spire height, aperture length, Aperture width, operculum length and Operculum width were recorded in the Tanjung Karang (Selongor) sampling locality. While the least value for most of these morphometric character were recorded from Tanjung Piandang locality (Perak). It could be concluded that the morphometric characters measured vary independently among the populations measured and is predicted among others factors to be governed by intensity of paddy cultivations rather than geographical gradients. The implications of this finding especially with respect to their management as pest of paddy were discussed.