Alder sawfly
The alder sawfly is a small black insect with a red patch on the front of its body. It is related to wasps. Its larvae look very funny: they are covered in fluffy white wool, like tiny cotton balls on the leaves of alder trees.
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Fun facts
Males are very rare, and the females can lay eggs that hatch without a father.
The larva makes its white woolly coat itself, from tiny glands in its skin.
The mother uses a sharp tube on her tail to tuck her eggs into a leaf.
When the larvae are fully grown, they drop to the ground and spend the winter in a cocoon among the fallen leaves.
In England there is one family of alder sawflies each year, but in Quebec in Canada there are two.
Most asked questions about Alder sawfly
?What does the alder sawfly eat?
Its larvae eat alder leaves, and sometimes elm and hazel leaves.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Eriocampa ovata
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Tenthredinidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Tenthredinidae
- Lives on
- Europe, North America
- Also known as
- Woolly alder sawfly
Where the facts come from
- Eriocampa ovata (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Bj.schoenmakers. CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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