Dusky wireworm
The dusky wireworm is a small, dark brown click beetle covered in fine grey hairs. Its legs and feelers are often a reddish brown. Its babies, called wireworms, live under the ground for years and nibble on plant roots.
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Fun facts
Its babies can live in the soil for 2 to 4 years before they become beetles. In cold places it takes the longest.
Around the year 1900 it travelled by accident to western Canada, maybe hidden in the soil of hop plants.
Farmers do not like the wireworms, because they chew holes in potatoes, beets and grain crops.
To keep an eye on them, farmers use special traps that tell them how many beetles are around.
In grassy meadows the wireworms have favourite foods, like the roots of yarrow and some kinds of grass.
Most asked questions about Dusky wireworm
?What is a wireworm?
It is the larva, or baby, of a click beetle. It lives in the soil and eats roots.
?Is the dusky wireworm harmful?
Not to people. It is a pest for farmers, because the wireworms damage crops like potatoes.
?How big is the dusky wireworm beetle?
The grown-up beetle is about 7 to 10 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Agriotes obscurus
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Elateridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Elateridae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, North America
- Also known as
- Obscure click beetle
Where the facts come from
- Agriotes obscurus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Udo Schmidt from Deutschland. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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