Sawfly Eats Beetle


Sawfly Eats Beetle

yellow sawfly eats beetle prey

Order Hymenoptera – Ants, Bees, Wasps and Sawflies

Family Tenthredinidae

Females of this subfamily often dine on smaller bugs in search of protein for building their eggs.

yellow sawfly eats beetle prey

This yellow sawfly captured and devoured a small beetle in less than 13 minutes.

She left nothing but pieces of the exoskeleton scattered around, then cleaned her antennae and flew off.

yellow sawfly dorsal view

Live adult sawfly photographed at West Chicago Prairie, DuPage County, Illinois. Size: 10mm.

One of the ways sawflies differ from other hymenopterans is that they do not have a narrow waist.

The “saw” in sawfly refers to the saw-edged ovipositor (below) these insects use to cut slits into foliage wherein they lay eggs.

sawfly ovipositor Sawfly ovipositor, Dolerus nitens

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