It winters below the ground, emerging in early summer as a 7–8 mm adult with a mainly orange body and a black head.

[2] 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.

Removal of various glucosinolates has been shown to reduce sensitivity to host plants in later adult stages.

[4] Due to no current primitive Hymenoptera, the turnip sawfly is being worked on for genome sequencing.