Gooseberry sawfly
The gooseberry sawfly is a small yellowish insect with black marks. It is not a real fly but a cousin of bees and wasps. Its green caterpillar-like babies love gooseberry leaves and can eat a whole bush bare.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its babies look like caterpillars: green with a black head and black spots, up to 2 centimetres long.
The mother lays her eggs under the leaves, and the babies eat their way up the bush.
It can have three families of babies in one year, from April to September.
Female sawflies are a little bigger than the males.
Most asked questions about Gooseberry sawfly
?Is the gooseberry sawfly a fly?
No. It is a sawfly, which is a cousin of bees and wasps, not a true fly.
?What does the gooseberry sawfly eat?
Its larvae eat gooseberry leaves and can strip a whole bush.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Nematus ribesii
- Named by
- Scopoli, 1763
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Tenthredinidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Tenthredinidae
- Lives on
- Europe, North America
- Also known as
- Common gooseberry sawfly, Imported currantworm
Where the facts come from
- Nematus ribesii (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Jonny Vatne. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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