ITP is pleased to announce new content and improvements to Longicorn ID, a tool supporting identification of cerambycoid beetles to family, subfamily, and tribe. Longhorn beetles—Cerambycidae and three smaller families—are a diverse group of wood boring beetles, a number of which are major economically important pests. Longhorn beetles can seriously impact forests and cause extensive damage to timber products, landscape and ornamental trees, and various agricultural crops.

The first edition of Longicorn ID was released in 2012, with subsequent editions expanding its taxonomic coverage, while this, the fourth and final edition, offers longhorn beetle larvae-focused content. It’s the larvae that are the damaging “wood borers,” using their strong jaws to bore into and feed on woody stems for one or two years, during which time they cannot necessarily be detected. It’s when they tunnel out to pupate and grow into adults, that the beetles and the damage they have caused, are more evident. Longicorn ID now features a larval key to subfamilies to complement the tool’s adult subfamily key, a morphological atlas of larval body parts, diagnostic descriptions of over 350 larval species, and nearly 250 photos of larvae.

ITP has also updated navigation within Longicorn ID to make it easier to find fact sheets, view and enlarge beetle photos, and access the tool’s nine Lucid keys to subfamilies and tribes. Additional website improvements are planned for 2021.

Longicorn ID Edition 4 is one of the tools in ITP's collection of 45 identification tool websites.