The Tenthredinoidea are the dominant superfamily of sawflies 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 ...

, containing some 8,400 species worldwide, primarily in the family

Tenthredinidae Tenthredinidae is the largest family of sawflies, with well over 7,500 species worldwide, divided into 430 genera. Larvae are herbivores and typically feed on the foliage of trees and shrubs, with occasional exceptions that are leaf miners, stem ...

. All known larvae are

phytophagous A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthpar ...

, and a number are considered pests. The included

extant Extant is the opposite of the word extinct. It may refer to: * Extant hereditary titles * Extant literature, surviving literature, such as ''Beowulf'', the oldest extant manuscript written in English * Extant taxon, a taxon which is not extinct, ...

families share the distinctive features of a medially narrowed

pronotum The prothorax is the foremost of the three segments in the thorax of an insect, and bears the first pair of legs. Its principal sclerites (exoskeletal plates) are the pronotum ( dorsal), the prosternum (ventral), and the propleuron (lateral) on e ...

, paired protibial spurs, and the loss of the transverse mesonotal groove. The superfamily also includes two

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

families. Meicai and Haiyan (1998) identified 66 extant

tribes The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to conflic ...

and 17 subfamilies.

Taxonomy

Families

Argidae Argidae is a large family of sawflies, containing some 800 species worldwide, primarily in tropical regions. The larvae are phytophagous, and commonly can be found feeding (and often pupating) in groups, though very few attain pest status. The ...

Konow, 1890 (58 genera, 897 spp.) * Blasticotomidae Thomson, 1871 (3 genera, 13 spp.) * Cimbicidae W. Kirby, 1837 (16 genera, 182 spp.) *

Diprionidae The Diprionidae are a small family of conifer-feeding sawflies (thus the common name conifer sawflies, though other Symphyta also feed on conifers) restricted to the Northern Hemisphere, with some 140 species in 13 genera. Larvae are often greg ...

Rohwer, 1910 (11 genera, 136 spp.) * Pergidae Rohwer, 1911 (60 genera, 442 spp.) *

Latreille, 1803 (430 genera, 7,500 spp.) * Zenargidae Rohwer, 1918 (1 genus, 1 sp.)

References

Bibliography

* , in Zhang, Z.-Q. (ed.) Animal Biodiversity: An Outline of Higher-level Classification and Survey of Taxonomic Richness (Addenda 2013) * * * Hymenoptera superfamilies Taxa named by Pierre André Latreille {{Sawfly-stub