![]() | Bottlebrush Sawfly PERGIDAE, SYMPHYTA, HYMENOPTERA | (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com ) and Stella Crossley |
(Photo: Don Herbison-Evans, Sydney, New South Wales)
These are not true Caterpillars, but are the larvae of a Sawfly (which is really a wasp, or more accurately a Symphytan). These larvae, when young, are gregarious sitting side by side as they skeletonise a host plant leaf. They feed on :
Other Sawfly species have different foodplants.
The larvae of Pterygophorus cinctus have very strong jaws. One group we captured gnawed through a plastic container in which we had housed them, leaving a little pile of plastic powder by their exit hole. They grow to a length of about 4 cms.
They pupate as a naked pupa in the leaf litter without any covering or cocoon.
An adult insect (it is misnamed as a 'fly') has pretty orange and black bands on its body. Its wingspan is about 2 cms. The species has been found in
Further reading :
Johann Christoph Friedrich Klug,
Die Blattwespen nach ihren Gattungen und Arten zusammengestellt,
Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin,
Volume 6 (1814) p. 278.
![]() not-lepidoptera | ![]() not-caterpillars | ![]() Lepidoptera | ![]() not-moths | ![]() not-lepidoptera |
(updated 23 January 2012, 10 February 2025)