White-spotted sawyer
The white-spotted sawyer is a big black beetle with a little white spot on its back. Its feelers are amazingly long: a male's can be twice as long as its body. It loves forests that have just had a fire.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
After a forest fire, these beetles fly in to lay eggs in the burnt trees. The worse the fire, the more beetles come.
The mother chews a tiny hole in the bark and puts just one egg inside. In her whole life she lays about 15 to 20 eggs.
A larva can live inside a log for up to four years before it becomes a beetle.
When it is ready, the new beetle chews its way out through the bark.
By eating dead wood it helps the forest recycle, so new plants can grow after a fire.
Most asked questions about White-spotted sawyer
?Is the white-spotted sawyer dangerous?
No. It is a harmless forest beetle, even if it looks big with its long feelers.
?What does the white-spotted sawyer eat?
Its larvae eat dead and dying wood. The adults nibble pine and spruce trees.
?Why does it have such long antennae?
The males have the longest ones, up to twice their body length. The females' feelers are only a little longer than their body.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Monochamus scutellatus
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Cerambycidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Cerambycidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Spruce sawyer, Spruce bug, Hair-eater
Where the facts come from
- Monochamus scutellatus (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 D. Gordon E. Robertson. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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