# Grub Hunting in the Carolinas - Species ID?



## BeginnerKeeper (Apr 3, 2022)

I collected two grubs of an unknown beetle species today, and I'm posting about the experience in hopes someone can identify what species they are.

I was walking through my neighborhood last evening when I passed a pile of bricks, which had been abandoned at the side of the road, just outside the fence hemming in a neighbor's backyard, quite some time ago. The bricks were partially embedded into the dirt and covered by pine straw, and it occurred to me they were probably a great insect habitat. So I flipped over the nearest one. A white grub half-buried in the red clay immediately started flailing and squirming as it was exposed. I got excited and flipped over a few more bricks. Most had grubs under them, and I replaced the bricks and started plotting as I walked home.

I came back in the afternoon of the next day, accompanied by a bug-friendly housemate and carrying small plastic jars, plastic spoons, and my phone. I had filled the jars with more red clay dirt from a pesticide-free area and hoped they would be good nurseries for any grubs we captured. With my housemate filming, I started turning over bricks. I started with the two bricks I remembered yielding grubs the previous night, and was surprised and disappointed to see no grubs anywhere. Then I realized that they were likely burying themselves deeper to avoid the heat, and I started digging. A few strokes of my miniature shovel turned up two grubs, and I had my housemate film them for a moment. After that I transferred them to separate jars. More searching revealed ants, worms, and some surprisingly big isopods, but no more grubs. I snapped mesh over the jars as a lid (I had poked holes in the plastic lids that came with the jars, but they still fogged up the plastic with humidity and made too wet a habitat, so I abandoned using those). We walked home talking about what the grubs might be.

I will post photos of the grubs, and hopefully that will help identify the grubs' species, but I'll also write out a full description for anyone interested. The grubs were roughly 3/4ths of an inch long, with distinct reddish-brown heads, white flesh, and a darker tail end that seemed to have organs pulsing under the skin. So basically standard beetle grubs. The first one I dug up immediately burrowed out of sight when placed in the jar, but the other one only buried itself halfway. They did not seem to have constructed cells or cocoons in the dirt, instead just haphazardly burying themselves, and they had some range of motion underground or ability to tunnel as shown by their moving deeper away from the sun. That's about all I know now.

I don't expect them to turn into anything particularly rare or awesome - they'll probably be June bugs or some such common "pest" beetle. I also don't have high hopes for identifying them in the larval stage, since I don't see much to differentiate them from other species of grubs. I don't even know if they'll transition successfully to the adult stage, although I tried to replicate their habitat by filling the jars with red clay dirt and giving each of them a small rock to burrow under. Still, I find the idea of successfully raising anything to adulthood exciting, and it will be a fun mystery until they hopefully emerge.

Any ideas on their species or type are welcome! Thanks all for your thoughts!


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## YeetdaMeme (Apr 4, 2022)

Might be Cotinis Mutabilis


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## Arthroverts (Apr 6, 2022)

@BeetleKing, @The Mantis Menagerie, thoughts?

Thanks,

Arthroverts


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