Athalia rosae
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~40%
Athalia rosae, the turnip sawfly, cabbage leaf sawfly or beet sawfly, is a typical sawfly with dark green or blackish 18–25 mm long larvae that feed on plants of the brassica family, and can sometimes be a pest. It winters below the ground, emerging in early summer as a 7–8 mm adult with a mainly orange body and a black head. The adult feeds on nectar.
The turnip sawfly was found to result in diploid males and females after sister-brother matings. This differs from normal haplodiploid hymenoptera and after a further cross causing triploid males, resulted in evidence that sex determination is controlled by a single locus. The sawflies have been found to sequester glucosinolates like many insects in larval stages. Removal of various glucosinolates has been shown to reduce sensitivity to host plants in later adult stages. The fact that glucosinolates being removed causes reduced sensitivity to future possible host plants has been used to argue that these chemicals are important in specific larval patterning to future host plant options. Due to no current primitive Hymenoptera, the turnip sawfly is being worked on for genome sequencing. This effort will add to the planned i5K, the effort to sequence 5,000 insect genomes in 5 years. Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wadden Sea National Park | 🇩🇪 Germany | |
| 2 | Bavarian Forest National Park | 🇩🇪 Germany |
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Helsinki | 🇫🇮 Finland | |
| 2 | Birmingham | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | |
| 3 | Kyiv | 🇺🇦 Ukraine | |
| 4 | Brussels | 🇧🇪 Belgium | |
| 5 | Warsaw | 🇵🇱 Poland | |
| 6 | Copenhagen | 🇩🇰 Denmark | |
| 7 | Berlin | 🇩🇪 Germany | |
| 8 | Cologne | 🇩🇪 Germany | |
| 9 | Rotterdam [The Hague] | 🇳🇱 Netherlands | |
| 10 | London | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Turnip Sawfly sighting in Bavarian Forest National Park on a given day, based on 10 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 523rd most-seen of the 1115 insects we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 40%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May and July–September
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Turnip Sawfly in Bavarian Forest National Park on a given day, against under 5% in June and October–April, the lowest months.
Between 11 am and 2 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Turnip Sawfly sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Among the best
Of the 2 parks where we can rate Turnip Sawfly sightings, Bavarian Forest National Park ranks 2nd at about 10%, level with the leaders once rounded. The best odds are in Wadden Sea National Park (Germany, about 10%).
Same family: Tenthredinidae
The closest relatives of the Turnip Sawfly that you can see in Bavarian Forest National Park (family Tenthredinidae, Common Sawflies) are Yellow-Spotted Macrophya (about 10%), Figwort Sawfly (about 10%) and Tenthredo rubricoxis (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Turnip Sawfly is recorded against all the insects logged in Bavarian Forest National Park (10 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
