Dineura testaceipes (Klug, 1816)

Dineura testaceipes - Northern hawthorn-cutter

North to northern Scotland, probably widespread but less well recorded than the others in the genus as its foodplant is more dominant in the north and west (Musgrove, 2024).

Of the three Dineura species found in Britain and Ireland, Dineura stilata and Dineura testaceipes can be difficult to tell apart. Dineura testaceipes prefers cooler climes and has a more northerly distribution than Dineura stilata, which prefers warmer conditions.

The head is black with pale on the clypeus and labrum and more or less on the supraclypeal area. The stigma is pale sometimes with some degree of darkening at the margins. The thorax is black above sometimes with varying degrees of pale on the corners of the pronotum, tegulae, edges to the lateral lobes and the front of scutellum. The abdomen is variable. In the darkest specimen almost completely black and in the palest, pale on the sternites, the lateral faces of tergites and tergites eight to ten above.

Dineura testaceipes larvae feed on mountain ash. Other food plants recorded from the continent include rowans, hawthorn and Cotoneaster melanocarpus.

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Size: Female: 5 - 6.5mm, male: 4 - 5.5mm

GB IUCN Status: Least Concern
GB Rarity Status: None

Distribution: England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland

Flight period: May to August

Plant associations: Sorbus aucuparia (mountain ash)