Thus, the number of wireworms is slowly increasing in our soils. Wireworm adults are click beetles the long slender beetles that nip themselves into the air to get back on their feet when placed on their backs. The larvae are hard bodied, slender. Usually their last body segment is prolonged or forked. Larvae are found in damaging numbers most often in fields that have been in continuous cereal production or have not been in annual crop production for several years.
Examples are pastures and sagebrush lands being brought into potato production.
The most common wireworm found in our irrigated lands is the sugarbeet wireworm. The most common species in uncultivated soils is the Great Basin wireworm. Damage Wireworms bore holes in tubers. The holes, which look as if they were made by stabbing the tuber with a nail, usually are lined with potato skin. Wireworm feeding on the seed piece or stem also opens tubers to decay and rot organisms.