Cephoidea is a small superfamily within the

Symphyta Sawflies are the insects of the suborder Symphyta within the order Hymenoptera, alongside ants, bees, and wasps. The common name comes from the saw-like appearance of the ovipositor, which the females use to cut into the plants where they lay ...

, commonly referred to as stem sawflies, containing some 100 species in 10 genera in the living family,

Cephidae Cephidae is a family of stem sawflies in the order Hymenoptera. There are about 27 genera and more than 160 described species in Cephidae. Genera These 27 genera belong to the family Cephidae: * '' Athetocephus'' Benson, 1935 * '' Australcep ...

, plus another 17 genera in the extinct family

Sepulcidae Sepulcidae is an extinct family of stem sawflies in the order Hymenoptera. The family is known primarily from late Mesozoic fossils found in 1968 in Transbaikalia. The insects were distant relatives of modern sawflies and are part of the living ...

. Most species occur in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago a ...

. The larvae are stem borers in various plants, especially

grass Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns an ...

es, but sometimes other

herbaceous plant Herbaceous plants are vascular plants that have no persistent woody stems above ground. This broad category of plants includes many perennials, and nearly all annuals and biennials. Definitions of "herb" and "herbaceous" The fourth edition of t ...

s, shrubs, or trees. A few are pests of

cereal A cereal is any Poaceae, grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis), composed of the endosperm, Cereal germ, germ, and bran. Cereal Grain, grain crops are grown in greater quantit ...

grains (e.g. ''

Cephus cinctus ''Cephus cinctus'', also known as wheat stem sawfly, is a slow flying, yellow and black coloured, destructive pest found mainly in western North America. Habit and habitat The adult fly grows to a length of 7 to 12 mm. Males are consider ...

'', which attacks

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

). They are exceptionally slender for symphytans, often resembling other types of

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...

s, and they are the only Symphyta which lack cenchri. They are sometimes postulated to be the

sister taxon In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and t ...

to the

Apocrita Apocrita is a suborder of insects in the order Hymenoptera. It includes wasps, bees, and ants, and consists of many families. It contains the most advanced hymenopterans and is distinguished from Symphyta by the narrow "waist" ( petiole) formed ...

, though the

Orussidae The Orussidae or the parasitic wood wasps represent a small family of sawflies (" Symphyta"). Currently, about 93 extant and four fossil species are known. They take a key position in phylogenetic analyses of Hymenoptera, because they form the s ...

are more commonly considered such. Calameuta filiformis (Cephidae sp

References

* * * Sawflies Hymenoptera superfamilies Taxa named by Edward Newman {{Sawfly-stub