page_title: Pinophyta
section_title: Predators
hierarchical_section_title: Pinophyta / Predators
caption_attribution_description: Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris 'Globosa'), Pine family (Pinaceae). Red Butte Garden, Salt Lake City, Utah.
context_page_description: The Pinophyta, also known as Coniferophyta or Coniferae, or commonly as conifers, are a division of vascular land plants containing a single extant class, Pinopsida. They are cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. All extant conifers are perennial woody plants with secondary growth. The great majority are trees, though a few are shrubs. Examples include cedars, Douglas firs, cypresses, firs, junipers, kauri, larches, pines, hemlocks, redwoods, spruces, and yews. As of 1998, the division Pinophyta was estimated to contain eight families, 68 genera, and 629 living species.
  Although the total number of species is relatively small, conifers are ecologically important. They are the dominant plants over large areas of land, most notably the taiga of the Northern Hemisphere, but also in similar cool climates in mountains further south. Boreal conifers have many wintertime adaptations. The narrow conical shape of northern conifers, and their downward-drooping limbs, help them shed snow. Many of them seasonally alter their biochemistry to make them more resistant to freezing.
context_section_description: At least 20 species of roundheaded borers of the family Cerambycidae feed on the wood of spruce, fir, and hemlock (Rose and Lindquist 1985). Borers rarely bore tunnels in living trees, although when populations are high, adult beetles feed on tender twig bark, and may damage young living trees. One of the most common and widely distributed borer species in North America is the whitespotted sawyer (Monochamus scutellatus). Adults are found in summer on newly fallen or recently felled trees chewing tiny slits in the bark in which they lay eggs. The eggs hatch in about 2 weeks, and the tiny larvae tunnel to the wood and score its surface with their feeding channels. With the onset of cooler weather, they bore into the wood making oval entrance holes and tunnel deeply. Feeding continues the following summer, when larvae occasionally return to the surface of the wood and extend the feeding channels generally in a U-shaped configuration. During this time, small piles of frass extruded by the larvae accumulate under logs. Early in the spring of the second year following egg-laying, the larvae, about 30 mm long, pupate in the tunnel enlargement just below the wood surface. The resulting adults chew their way out in early summer, leaving round exit holes, so completing the usual 2-year life cycle.
caption: Globosa, a cultivar of Pinus sylvestris, a northern European species, in the North American Red Butte Garden
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