Caterpillar ?Cicada larvae
Location: Michigan
May 2, 2012 9:39 pm
I found this caterpillar in the garden on a sunny day in May in Michigan. It was very fast and before I got my camera it disapeared. When I located it, it had burrowed head first into the leaf litter on top of the soil. It had some bristles near the head. Looks like a cicada larva to me but the pictures I saw looked different.
Signature: Linda
Scarab Beetle Larva
Hi Linda,
This is the larva of a Scarab Beetle and it is commonly called a Grub. Though we are uncertain of the exact species, we suspect it might be the larva of a Green June Beetle, Cotinis nitida, which you can find pictured on BugGuide.
Thank you for the identification. It certainly does look like the one in BugGuide. I forgot to mention the size, it was large, at least 3 inches. My bug book shows the Green June Beetle larvae at 2 inches. I love your site and have it bookmarked. Thanks again, Linda
Metallic rainbow beetle larvae in GA, USA wetland.
Location: Augusta, GA, USA
February 17, 2012 7:04 pm
Hi, I found these larvae in large nests (clumps of dried leaves held together with webs) in a common shrub in an Augusta, GA wetland on February 11, 2012. I don’t know the name of the shrub, but I know it’s very widespread in wetlands in the southeastern USA. At any rate, these nests were very common throughout the shrubs, with several nests per shrub, and each nest seems to contain several larvae in various instars. The largest larvae I saw were ~1 cm long.
Thanks!
Signature: Sarah
Larva
Hi Sarah,
WE are posting your photos as unidentified because we haven’t the time to research this at the moment. Perhaps one of our readers will supply an answer in our absence. The nest is quite a curiosity. We wish you could supply the name of the plant.
Larval Nest
Comment from
That is the larva of Trirhabda bacharidis (Weber), a leaf beetle which is host specific to salt bush, Baccharis halimifolia. Don’t think it has anything to do with the “nests.”
It is interesting that the species name of the Leaf Beetle is derived from the generic name for the host plant. We located this Coleopterists Bulletin article entitled “The Host Specificity and Biology of Trirhabda bacharidis“. BugGuide calls it the Groundselbush Beetle.
Update from Sarah
March 31, 2011
I apologize for my tardy reply, but I believe the mystery is mostly solved. I took the plant to a botanist and the bug to an entomologist at Georgia Southern University. The botanist said the plant is Baccharis halimifolia, eastern baccharis. The entomologist said he thinks the larvaea are Chrysomelid beetles, but he can’t identify them to species unless they’re grown out to adults.
what is this?
Location: Nort east , India
February 17, 2012 8:14 am
I sleep with my grandmother and i heard a few noises the next day i complained about it to my parents and when we split the wood into two we found these worms. they ate up all the wood used in the window pane!!!what are they???we usually thought that they were termites but they turned out to b something else.
Signature: lavanya
Metallic Borer Beetle Larvae
Hi lavanya,
These are the larvae of Metallic Borer Beetles in the family Buprestidae. The larvae are wood borers that are called Flat-Head Borers and the adults are sometimes called Jewel Beetles because of their beautiful colors. Larvae of Buprestids have been known to survive in milled wood for as long as fifty years. See these photos on BugGuide for a comparison to some larvae from North American Buprestids.
Wattle-killer
Location: Perth Hills, Western Australia
May 24, 2011 5:22 am
Hi Bugfolk,
A friend pointed me to your site after seeing the attached photos.
I cut down a large dead wattle about two years ago and found these holes and exoskeletons. I’ve shown them to a few people, but not managed to find out what it is. To add to the challenge, the photo isn’t what the bug would have looked like when it was alive!
My note on the photo identifies the remains as about 8cm long (+/- 2cm).
Any identification or pointers you could provide would be really welcome!
Signature: James
Pupa of a Borer Beetle
Dear James,
This is a beetle pupa from the family Buprestidae, a group that is commonly collectively called the Metallic Borer Beetles or Jewel Beetles. There are many Australian species and some are quite host specific. We cannot provide a species name.
Wattle Tree with Borer Damage
grub in the wood
Location: houston, texas
May 2, 2011 10:24 am
I had a water oak that died a year ago. I chopped it down and was splitting the wood for firewood. This grub fell out. It was burrowed in the middle of the log and is about 2 and half inches long. What is it, and could it be the reason the tree died?
Signature: shawn
Round Headed Borer Larva
Hi Shawn,
This is the larva of a beetle in the family Cerambycidae, the Longhorned Borers. The Larvae are known as Round Headed Borers. You can compare your images to those posted to BugGuide. The BugGuide information page indicates this about food: “Larval habits: Most species feed within dead, dying or even decaying wood, but some taxa can use living plant tissue. Girdlers (adults of the Onciderini, larvae of genera in the tribes Methiini, Hesperophanini and Elaphidiini) sever living branches or twigs, with the larvae developing within the nutrient-rich distal portion. The larvae of a few species move freely through the soil, feeding externally upon roots or tunneling up under the root crown.” BugGuide goes on to reveal this about the life cycle: “The life spans in temperate regions typically range from 1 to 3 years, but cycles of 2-3 months to decades have been documented. Most of the lifetime is spent in the larval stage; the adults usually emerge, disperse, reproduce, and die within a few days to months. Cellulose digestion appears to be aided primarily by enzymes rather than symbiotic microorganisms. In many cases, Cerambycidae are primary borers, providing a vital ‘first step’ in the biorecycling of wood.” The other major family of wood boring beetles are the Metallic Wood Borers in the family Buprestidae. The Buprestid Larvae are known as Flat Headed Borers. You may compare the Round Headed Borers to the Flat Headed Borers by looking at these images on BugGuide. Except in rare cases, Borers feed on dead and dying wood and they do not infest the wood of healthy trees, so we doubt that the death of the tree was caused by this Round Headed Borer.
Round Headed Borer Larva
Giant larva in my copost bin?
Location: Burbank, California
May 1, 2011 5:39 pm
Hi,
We get lots of interesting creatures in our compost and I see many of these larve that are about as thick around as my middle finger. Last time I was turning the compost, I pulled a few out to take a picture and hopefully identify them.
I hope you can help, my kids and especially interested in learning what they areso they can tel their classmates at school.
Our guess was perhaps tomato bug larvae?
Thanks!
Signature: Curious Dad
Crawlyback
Hi Curious Dad,
You have Crawlybacks, the larvae of the Green Fruit Beetle or Figeater, Cotinus mutabilis. The name Crawlyback is discussed by Charles Hogue in his awesome book, Insects of the Los Angeles Basin, where he writes that the larvae “obtain purchase on the substratum with traverse rows of still short stout bristles on the back of the thorax.” The larvae do not affect lawns or grass. The bright metallic green adults are active in August and September.
Crawlybacks
Grubs and beetle
Location: Washington, DC
May 1, 2011 3:15 pm
I found numerous grubs and a few beetles nearby in my vegetable garden today. I wonder if they are related. Any assistance in identifying them would be appreciated.
Signature: Roy
Big Headed Ground Beetle and Scarab Grubs
Hi Roy,
Your grubs and beetle are only distantly related in that they are in the same insect order. The grubs are Scarab Grubs, most likely June Beetles, and they feed on plant roots. The Beetle is a beneficial predator, a Ground Beetle in the genus Scarites. BugGuide lists six species in the genus, and our money is on the Big Headed Ground Beetle, Scarites subterraneus, as the species. You may read about the Big Headed Ground Beetle on BugGuide.
Big Headed Ground Beetle
Gnarly, Big Grubs
Location: Southern California
April 1, 2011 9:20 pm
We were digging out our compost heap today and found a bucket full of these suckers. Chickens got a few of them, but we figured we shouldn’t let them at it in case they’d be bad for ’em. We live in Orange County, and the compost has been sitting about two years now. Any idea what these suckers are? Are they poisonous? Do they morph out to something beneficial, or should I just let the chickens have ’em? Any help would be greatly appreciated
Signature: Andrew U.
Crawly-Backs
Hi Andrew,
You have Crawly-Backs in your compost pile. Crawly-Backs get that common name from their habit of propelling themselves through soil on their backs. Crawly-Backs are the larvae of the Green Fruit Beetle, commonly called the Figeater. Such a plentiful supply of Crawly-Backs is a sign that you have a healthy ecosystem in your compost pile and the organic materials are being broken down into usable nutrients for plants. The Crawly-Backs are beneficial in your compost pile and you can see this posting from our archives. When the adult Figeaters appear in August, they may eat your peaches or figs or other fruit, and if they are plentiful, they may cause some damage, but they are beautiful metallic green beetles of considerable size, and we would never think of them as a pest in our home garden. Quite the contrary, we love first hearing them buzzing and then enjoy seeing them as the fly about in a lumbering manner. They really are beautiful beetles and you can see images of adults in our archives. We cannot imagine that eating Crawly-Backs will harm your chickens, however, we are a bit reluctant to give chicken advice. We had a run of back luck last year with our own chickens, the Fuzzy Bottom Gals, though we are going to try raising chickens again this year after making sure we buy vaccinated stock.
Crawly-Back
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