Common Name: Horntails; Wood wasps Description: Horntails are relatively large insects. They have a long, cylindrical abdomen with a distinctive “spur” on the dorsal side of the last abdominal tergite. Most species are brown, blue, or black with yellow markings. Females lay eggs in maple, elm, beech, and other trees. The larvae are wood borers.

The Siricidae are a family of large, colorful, stingless wasps whose larvae bore into wood. They are members of the suborder Symphyta (sawflies, and horntails or woodwasps) of the insect order Hymenoptera (ants, wasps, and bees), and are characterized by having a broad waist and an ovipositor modified to insert eggs into wood.

North American Siricidae is currently in a state of flux. Some characters used in the past are more variable than previously thought, and there are not enough specimens, especially

2024年8月3日 · 2 subfamilies, with 28 spp. in 5 genera in our area and ~120 spp. in 10 genera worldwide (1)

Horntails (Siricidae) are important wood–boring insects with 10 extant genera and about 122 species worldwide. Adults and larvae of Siricidae are often intercepted at ports and are of concern as potential alien invasive species.

However, a significant group of woodpeckers specialize on subcortical insects such as the larvae of woodwasps (Siricidae), longhorned beetles (Cerambycidae), jewel beetles (Buprestidae), deathwatch beetles (Anobiidae), weevils (Curculionidae), and …

Horntail wood-wasps (Siricidae) consist of ten extant genera (Schiff et al. 2012) that are mainly distributed in Hol-arctic forests, from the northern tree line through mid-latitudes, with few outside of this range.

North America: The Siricidae occurs throughout forested regions of Canada and the United States as far north as Alaska, south into Mexico and the Caribbean (Schiff et al. 2012

Web author Simon van Noort (Iziko South African Museum) Citation: van Noort, S. 2025. WaspWeb: Hymenoptera of the World. URL: www.waspweb.org (accessed on <day/month ...

Pits in Siricidae are usually simple concave and round impressions, but those on the mesoscutum and mesoscutellum may be very dense and polygonal with their edges becoming ridges of various heights so as to look like irregular craters or a fish net (Fig. A3.24).