Categories

beetle larvae?
Hi, I’ve been bugging on and off for around 40 years but I have never seen one of these before. It’s about an inch long and found it in the dry Texas hill country. It moves very slow so I don’t see how it could catch anything but looks predatory to me, maybe it sits and waits? I know it’s a larvae but of what species, I don’t know. Do you know what this thing is?

Discounting the possibility that this is a Graboid from the movie Tremors, we believe a Beetle Grub is a good possibility, but we are not sure what. It could be subterranean, like the Graboids, which would make it a more effective predator than it is above ground. We are contacting Eric Eaton to see what he thinks.

Ha, ..Graboid.. Well I know your not seeing it in person but you’d see that it’s not a common grub. I noticed too that it has a feature underneath very close to the back end that it probably uses to anchor down and probably helps it crawl through holes, maybe those to finger-like things help it stay anchored too if it catches something at the entrance of a hole, ..speculating a lot there. I guess I’ll hang on to it and see what it turns into if we can’t find more info. Thanks a lot!
David
I was wondering if it was a larvae of a Pasimachus species, maybe something like Pasimachus elongatus? …I can’t find of pic of a larvae of one of those.

Update: (07/02/2008)
Hi, Daniel:
Wow, a couple real challenges! I suspect the grub is a soil-encrusted “wireworm,” the larva of a large click beetle, family Elateridae, but I can’t be positive. Looks like it has two prongs coming out the hind end which would be peculiar for wireworms….
Eric

Related Posts

1. Scoliid Wasp and Scarab Grub from Australia (February 26, 2007)
2. Cerambycid Grub (December 3, 2005)
3. Scarab Beetle Grub (November 7, 2004)
4. Click Beetle: Tobacco Wireworm perhaps (July 19, 2009)
5. Wireworm (December 7, 2009)