European spruce bark beetle
The European spruce bark beetle is a tiny dark brown beetle, only about half a centimetre long. It lives under the bark of spruce trees and digs long, branching tunnels there. Lots of them together can kill a big tree.
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Fun facts
The male digs a little room under the bark, and up to four females come to visit him.
Each mother digs her own tunnel and lays about 80 eggs, each in its own tiny nook along the sides.
The beetles send out a special smell that calls many more beetles to the same tree.
Woodpeckers help the forest by splitting off the bark to eat the larvae.
Its wing cases have four little spines at the end of each side, which is why it is also called the eight-toothed bark beetle.
Most asked questions about European spruce bark beetle
?Why is the spruce bark beetle a problem?
Its tunnels cut through the layer that carries food in the tree, and it brings fungi that rot the wood. Many beetles together can kill a tree.
?How big is the spruce bark beetle?
Only about 4 to 5.5 millimetres long.
?Is the spruce bark beetle dangerous to people?
No. It does not bite or sting people.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Ips typographus
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Curculionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Curculionidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
- Also known as
- Eight-toothed spruce bark beetle, Engraver beetle
Where the facts come from
- European spruce bark beetle (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 Gilles San Martin. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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