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We were camped just outside of Waterton National Park at a place called Crooked Creek Campground.  It was a five minute drive to the park and turned out to be a great launching point for our adventures.  I took some time while at the camp to look for any interesting insects to photograph and I came across a small, light green beetle.  I used my macro equipment to capture images and then came upon more of them that were engaged with mating (see below). The insects were always found on leaves of the same kind of plant.  They tend to prefer shrubs belonging to willow ( Silex ) or poplar ( Populus ).  They will eat the leaves of fruit trees and can damage young trees.  The same is true for the grubs (larval form of beetle).  They burrow in the soil and feed on the roots of preferred vegetation.  Their presence does not usually adversely affect the shrubs or trees themselves unless the plants are young. These weevils are not native to North America. ...

There are quite a few different long-horned beetle species, but few of them have antennae as long as the one I found today.  This particular one looks similar to the Asian Longhorn beetle, an invasive insect from Japan that is chewing its way through the eastern US, but I don’t believe it to be that species.  It is similar to other longhorns I have photographed but this one has white markings on its elytra (wing covers).  I think it may belong to the flat-faced long-horned beetles; there is one in one of my many field guides that seems similar to it.  This would be the white-spotted sawyer.  The antennae of these beetles can be three times as long as the body, which applies to the ones I found.  The males have the longest antennae. There was one remarkable aspect to the beetle.   There were quite a few eggs laid on its pronotum.   You can see them in the right image; just behind the head there is a rough, reddish patch.   On closer inspecti...