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Sticker of Pasture wireworm
Bug card No. 3266 of 4,939

Pasture wireworm

Monocrepidius exsul
Eats: A bit of everythingBeetlesGardens and meadows6 legs

The pasture wireworm is a long, narrow click beetle, brown or black. Its babies are called wireworms and live in the soil under grass. Like other click beetles, it can flip itself into the air with a click.

Lives in
New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii, and now also North America and Europe
Length
0.8 to 1.3 cm (0.33 to 0.51 in)
Top speed
about 0.47 km/h (0.29 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people.
What does it eat?
It eats plants and insects, such as seeds, sugar cane shoots and the grubs of other insects. Its larvae eat grass roots.
For real!Photo of Pasture wireworm
Picture by Caroline Harding, MAF. CC BY 3.0 au, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Pasture wireworm about 1.3 cm long (0.51 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
as long as 2 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 7.7 seconds

How big is Pasture wireworm compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

The females are bigger than the males.

2

Its larva lives in the soil for 8 to 12 months before it turns into a pupa.

3

A grown-up beetle lives for only about 38 days on average.

4

In Hawaii and Australia it mostly eats young sugar cane shoots.

you asked

Most asked questions about Pasture wireworm

?What does the pasture wireworm eat?

Plants and insects. The larvae eat grass roots, and the adults eat things like seeds and other insects' grubs.

?How big is the pasture wireworm?

Males are 8.5 to 12 millimetres long and females 11 to 13 millimetres.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Monocrepidius exsul
Group
Beetles
Family
Elateridae
Classification
Insecta > Coleoptera > Elateridae
Lives on
Australia and Oceania, North America, Europe
Also known as
Sugarcane wireworm

Where the facts come from

  1. Monocrepidius exsul (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Caroline Harding, MAF. CC BY 3.0 au, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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More from the same group: Beetles

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