Neocoenorrhinus germanicus (Herbst, 1797)

A locally common species occurring throughout Europe from the Mediterranean north to the UK and central Fennoscandia, to the south extending to Algeria and further east through Asia Minor and Russia to Mongolia and Siberia, in some continental regions it is an occasional serious pest of various soft fruits, occurring in huge numbers and requiring chemical treatment, but although it may occur in numbers among fruit crops in the UK, it is very rarely a serious pest. Here it is widespread and locally common across Wales and England north to Nottingham and much more sporadic and rare further north to southern Scotland. Typical habitats are well-vegetated open woodland and parkland, wooded borders and hedgerows, adults may be swept from low vegetation or, frequently, beaten from various shrubs, and in the spring they may also occur on hawthorn blossom. Host plants include a variety of wild and cultivated soft fruits, in a commercial sense the most important being strawberry, but also raspberry and loganberry, and in the wild also from various broadleaf trees such as oak, hazel and sweet cherry. Adults overwinter and become active during the first warm days of March or April, they feed on emerging tender foliage for a while before mating and oviposition begins in April and continues into July or even August depending on the season. Eggs are laid in soft stems below blossom trusses or stolons; females bite a hole, or sometimes several holes, into the surface tissue and insert up to four eggs into each stem, they then bite a series of small punctures around the stalk below the oviposition site and these cause the stem to slowly die-off and eventually fall to the ground. Larvae feed within the stems on decaying tissues and grow rapidly, they are fully grown within six weeks and leave the fallen stem to enter the ground to pupate, but if the stem does not fall they will emerge and fall to the ground in order to pupate. They burrow down a few centimetres and construct an earth cocoon in which to pupate, pupation occurs after about a week and adults are fully formed after a few weeks but they remain in the soil until the following spring when they will emerge and begin maturation feeding. Adult feeding does not adversely affect the plant, it is the destruction of blossom trusses and terminal shoots by the larvae that cause commercial losses.