Carolina Leaf Roller

danielj

August 26th, 2006 at 12:00 am

Categories

Crickets, Camel Crickets and Mole Crickets

Mysterious Bugs
My husband and I recently moved into our newly-built home, north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Our nearly acre and a half used to be forest and there is still dense forest around our home. I’ve seen quite a few bugs that I have never seen before! Through your website, I was available to identify two of the pictures as a nursery web spider and a stink bug. I wasn’t able to find anything on your site that matched the other bug I saw. It had VERY long antennae, looked like a cross between a cricket and a cockroach and was very shiny and red. I’m attaching one close up and one that fits its antennae in the shot. Thank you!

leaf roller Carolina Leaf Roller leafroller 2 Carolina Leaf Roller

This is a Carolina Leaf Roller, Camptonotus carolinensis, the only know North American species in the genus. It is one of the Raspy Crickets in the family Gryllacrididae. According to BugGuide, the Carolina Leaf Roller: “Bites through leaf in order to form flap. Flap is folded over, edge is pulled down with legs, and then edges are glued together with silk from gland on mouth. Sometimes uses empty Bladdernut (Staphylea) pods in which to hide instead of leaves. ” As your second photo shows, the antennae can be five times the length of the body. Thank you for sending a new species to our site.

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Comments 1

outdoorguy27 wrote:
We have these in our yard, but they have what look to be stingers on the back of them. Maybe it is just on males or females, but all of the ones I have seen have the thing that looks like a stinger. Seems to be the exact same bug and my research leads to it being a Carolina Leaf Rolling Cricket Species Camptonotus carolinensis – Carolina Leaf-roller. What I don’t see is if these things bite or sting. They are found near where my kids play in the yard, so any insight anyone can share would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Steve
Posted 27 Aug 2009 at 11:09 am ¶