Subject: What is it?
Location: SE Uganda, E Africa
April 7, 2016 1:21 am
Good morning.
I live in SE Uganda, and a tree in my garden is getting eaten by these bugs. They bore big holes in the branches. Each beetle is about 2-3 inches long.
Nobody can tell me what they are.
Please note, I am not concerned about the tree, just curious about the beetles!
Can you help?
Signature: Mark Vine
Dear Mark,
This is a Longhorned Borer Beetle or Longicorn in the family Cerambycidae, and the larvae from this family do bore in the stems, trunks and roots of trees and shrubs. They are usually quite host specific, confining their feeding to a single species or family. We quickly discovered the identity of your Longicorn as Petrognathus gigas on Insect Designs, and we found additional documentation on Meinbezirk, but alas, we did not discover the host tree.
Hi Daniel,
Wow, that was quick!
Thank you very much, mystery solved.
We can’t identify the host tree either.
It’s just a useless, non-native, soft-wood, so our Petrognathus gigas’ are more than welcome to it!
Kind regards
Mark