Elm leaf beetle
species of leaf beetle
Xanthogaleruca luteola, commonly known as the elm-leaf beetle, is a beetle species in the family Chrysomelidae that is native to Europe but invasive in other parts of the world.
Description
The imago (adult beetle) is 6–8 mm in length, and ranges from yellow to green in colour, with a spot on its head, an hourglass mark and two spots on the pronotum, and a broad, dark stripe along the edge of each elytron. The larvae are usually black, occasionally black and yellow, with multiple rows of dots on the back and on the sides and < 13 mm long. The pupae are orange-yellow with black chaetae. The eggs are yellow, and laid in spindle-like clusters of < 25 on the undersides of the elm leaves.
Distribution
These beetles are common in the Western Palearctic realm from Portugal to Central Asia.
Indigenous to Europe, they were accidentally introduced to North America and Australia, and are now widespread, and are serious pests in Australia and parts of North America.
Gallery
Ecology
X. luteola is a serious pest of the elm. Both the adults and larvae feed on the emergent leaves of the elm. Repeated heavy infestation rarely kills the tree outright, but weakens it, rendering it vulnerable to disease.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Elm leaf beetle” is species of leaf beetle. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through leaf, beetle and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1307509. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elm leaf beetle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.