A mystery Sawfly - and a new species for Essex

Just after writing the article about the uncertain hoverfly (see here), I came across a very uncertain sawfly.

Sawflies are a member of an Order of insects called the Hymenoptera, which includes bees, wasps and ants. Sawflies could be considered to be primitive wasps, but unlike wasps they have no waists. Hymenoptera are not  "true flies", as these comprise the Order Diptera which have just two wings. Hymenoptera have two pairs of wings.

On April 6th, 2011, I noticed a distinctive creature on some honeysuckle leaves in my garden, adjacent to Manor Park Cemetery. As I've stated before, I am far from experienced in the identification of insects, but immediately thought that it was probably a sawfly, and one that I hadn't been aware of before. I took a few photographs as it walked slowly around (mainly on the underside) of some honeysuckle leaves.

Zaraea loniceraeAfter some research, I determined that it looked most like a species of Abia, and accessed the Essex Field Club's website to see what the status of these were in Essex. The only Abia species was A. sericea, although the food plant was quite different. It was also on the Essex Red Data List, so I thought that I should contact an expert for assistance in case it was worthy of a record.

Not unexpectedly, my email – together with photographs – resulted in the response that it was virtually impossible to identify just from photographs, but with the suggestion that it looked more like a Zaraea species, perhaps Z. fasciata, Z. lonicerae or Z. aenea, which develop on plants such as honeysuckle and which are recorded as early as April.

Accordingly, I was asked for a specimen if possible, and much against the principles that I expounded in the article about hoverflies, the following day I managed to catch one of two specimens that were present in the garden, and posted it off. I had a restless night wondering whether the poor thing would survive First Class with a bit of honeysuckle as company in a plastic tube in a jiffy bag. It was confirmed the next day as Zaraea lonicerae. Lonicera, by the way, is honeysuckle - so there at least was a clue there! I didn't enquire whether it survived - or where it is now.

As far as is known this is the first record of this species in Essex; sawflies seem to have been a very neglected group, not just in Essex but generally, so any record such as this is valuable.

As an addendum to this, I was looking through my own photographs of sawflies, and found one that I had found in my garden on May 2nd 2006. I had tentatively identified this as an Abia species; it looks very like the recent ones, and was on honeysuckle!

Thanks to Peter Harvey of the Essex Field Club for his help and in finally identifying this species, and to Jerry Bowdrey at Colchester & Suffolk Museums for checking the Victoria County History and confirming that the species is not listed.

Paul Ferris. 11th April 2011