Oak timberworm
The oak timberworm is a long, shiny, reddish brown beetle with yellow spots on its back. The female has a long thin snout, while the male has a flat snout with big jaws. The males use those jaws to fight each other.
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Fun facts
The males also use their big jaws when courting a female.
Its larvae often tunnel almost right through a tree, then make a sharp U-turn and tunnel back.
Its larvae are white and curved, with three pairs of short legs.
It reached Nova Scotia in Canada hidden in a shipment of wooden furniture.
It mostly attacks trees that are already hurt or logs that were just cut.
Most asked questions about Oak timberworm
?What does the oak timberworm eat?
Its larvae bore through the wood of oak, elm, beech and poplar trees.
?Why do oak timberworm males have big jaws?
They use them to fight other males and also when courting females.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Arrenodes minutus
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Brentidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Brentidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Arrenodes minutus (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 Sam Droege from Beltsville, USA. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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