A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Tenthredinidae
The Tenthredinidae is the largest family of sawflies, with well over 6000 species worldwide. The family has no easily seen diagnostic features, making identification hard. These sawflies are often black or brown, and from 3-20 mm long. Like other sawflies they lack the slender "wasp-waist".
Spotted in scree at alt. 2000 m ASL.
15 mm long. Covered with pollen!
Gordon, thanks for confirming the Tenthredinidae family! Yasser and Atul, thanks for your comments!
OK, I've looked around the internet for more information and have found several insects that look very much like this labeled as sawflies, but can't pin it down anymore than that. The Tenthredinidae family is large and diverse, but the fact that the abdomen joins "broadly" to the thorax distinguishes sawflies from wasps, which I think this one does. See http://www.bugsandweeds.co.uk/sawflies.h... as one example of a similar insect, but the antennae color is different between this unknown spotting and the subject of this page. I need to log off and work on other projects, but I'm fairly convinced that this is a sawfly.
Thank you so much bayucca! Now I have some serious summer homework to do:-) I'll go through these carefully.
Tricky group!!
I have several candidate, but due to holidays, I had not time to a VERY careful search (what would be needed). They are all looking very similar and location/altitude must in this case certainly considered.
Just a few links to check for getting closer and closer and closer...
http://www.treknature.com/gallery/photo2...
http://www.naturspaziergang.de/Pflanzenw...
http://www.naturalis-historia.de/bilder/...
http://www.tierportraet.ch/htm07d/tenthr...
http://insektenfotos.de/insects_hymenopt...
What about this one: http://www.tierportraet.ch/htm08b/ectemn...
http://www.tierportraet.ch/htm07d/ectemn...
VERY close (location!) but look at the body colors!
http://www.entomologie.de/cgi-bin/webbbs...
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergblattwe...
My closest guess would be this one???
http://home.arcor.de/erannis54/bienen.ht...
This may be one of the sawflies, at least it resembles some of the sawflies we have here in the US. I'll take a quick look around and see what I can find.
In the meanwhile I am pretty sure it is not a real wasp/Vespinae. Look at the body and the corresponding segments.
Thanks for your comment bayucca! Yes, the antennae and the fact that the waist doesn't appear narrow threw me of with this one.... I should also mention that it was quite long (about 15 mm). I thought of this guy but I am not sure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellinus_ar...
I am wondering about the antennae, which do not exactly look like the ones from real wasps, so maybe some kind of a wasp mimic?? Although it really looks like some kind of a wasp.
Spotted on Jun 29, 2012
Submitted on Jul 5, 2012
+4
