species first recorded in Pennsylvania in 1925, now occurs in Connecticut, New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ontario. Its preferred hosts are eastern white and red 
pines, but it also attacks several other pines, including Scotch, Austrian, Swiss 
mountain, and Japanese red. Female adults have orange-red heads and steel-blue 
bodies; males are almost entirely steel-blue. Full-grown larvae are pale greenish- 
gray and about 16 to 20 mm long. The head is clay yellow with dense, small dark- 
brown spots, and there are longitudinal stripes of purplish red on the dorsum, 
venter, and sides. The prepupa is bright apple-green. 
Winter is spent in the prepupal stage, pupation occurs in early spring, and adults 
appear from about mid-April to mid-May. Eggs, in short rows of 3 to 10 each, are 
deposited over small slits cut into the previous year’s needles. The larvae spin loose 
webbing about themselves and feed gregariously on the old needles. Young larvae 
cut the needles off just above the bundle sheaths and pull them into the webbing, 
where they are consumed. Older larvae feed singly from within individual silken 
tubes spun around themselves along twigs. Considerable amounts of frass and bits 
of needles usually adhere to the exterior of these tubes (/333) (fig. 177). Full-grown 
larvae drop to and enter the ground for hibernation in an earthern cell. There is one 
generation per year. Heavy infestations sometimes develop locally, causing severe 
defoliation (505). 
F-531259 Courtesy Conn. Agric. Exp. Stn. 
Figure 176.—Pine shoot gall sawfly, Figure 177.—Damage and webbing by 
Xyela gallicaulis, on new shoot of the pine false webworm, 
loblolly pine in Georgia. Acantholyda erythrocephala. 
379 
