White spotted sawyer long-horned beetles in Cypress Hills Provincial Park


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 inspection, they seem to be many tiny round eggs that are attached to the beetle.  I have seen this before on other long-horn beetles.  I shot this with my iPhone 15 Pro as I didn’t have any of my other camera equipment with me at the time.  Below is a close up of the infected area.


The white-spotted sawyer has a one or two year life cycle, depending on how far north they are.  The larvae feed on mostly pine trees that are either dead or dying.  The adults are mostly active at day, as the ones I found were, and feed on pine needles and twig bark.  The jaws (you can just see part of one on the above photo) are relatively strong and can inflict an impressive bite.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com


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