Black Pine Longhorn Beetle - Karagay's Black Moustached

Black Pine Longhorn Beetle - Monochamus galloprovincialis Oll.

The body of the beetle is thick, black with a bronze sheen, and has a reddish hairy covering on the pronotum and the underside of the body.

The head is covered with closely set reddish hairs, with a narrow longitudinal groove in the middle. Near the antennae, there is a spine-like protrusion on the inner side.

The eyes are large and broadly convex. The antennae are long. The first segment is thick and two times shorter than the third.

The pronotum has sharp conical tubercles on the sides, with wide constrictions at both the apex and base. The disc of the pronotum is convex and covered with closely set yellow hairs.

The scutellum is triangular, narrowly rounded at the back, and covered with dense reddish hairs. A bare strip extends to the middle of the scutellum.

The elytra are wide and convex at the shoulders. They taper slightly towards the apex and are rounded at the tip. In the front third, they are coarsely and deeply wrinkled-punctate, in the middle part they have sparse and deep punctures, and in the rear third, they have isolated, almost erased dots. Additionally, the elytra are covered with short, closely set white, gray, and yellowish or reddish hairs, forming spots and often 2-3 wide irregular bands.

The middle tibiae have coarse brown bristles on the outer side, forming a brush.

The underside of the body is covered with dense reddish-bronze hair.

The antennae, legs, and body are black. The body length is 11-28 mm.

The larva has a narrow head that is almost entirely retracted into the thorax; only the front edge of the head with two strong black mandibles is visible from the outside. Longhorn beetle larvae are very resilient and can go for long periods without food. Moreover, they are very strong: they can burrow into hard wood, feed on it, and destroy trees. Both the larvae and the beetles cause damage, feeding on needles and gnawing the bark of thin branches and shoots. Damaged trees eventually dry out.

Adult beetles fly well, are photophilic, and prefer sparse, well-warmed stands. In mixed stands, the number of longhorn beetles sharply decreases. They settle all over the trunk, with more males observed in the upper part.

The black longhorn beetle breeds in clearings, in areas affected by bark beetles, in logging sites, and in wood storage areas. Outbreaks occur as a result of violations of sanitary regulations in forests, soil compaction, grazing, etc. The black longhorn beetle is a carrier of bacterial and viral tree diseases. As a dangerous pest of pine forests, this beetle is included in the list of quarantine objects of the Kyrgyz Republic.

Distribution: Northern Tien Shan

Insects of Kyrgyzstan