Mysterious burrows showing up in Eastern PA greens and tees

(New Update on the bottom of this post- 9/2/14)

My technician Danny Kline received a photo from Landcaster CC in eastern PA this week. It appears that some sort of burrowing insect was unearthing soil and causing mounds on the edges of collars, greens and tee boxes.  Naturally, the first thing that comes to mind at this time of the year is the turfgrass ant, Lasius neoniger or earthworms.  Since we plan on investigating the biology and ecology of the turfgrass ant for improved control on golf courses next year in the lab, we decided to take a ride to LCC and pay Todd Bidlespacher  (director of golf) and Mike Yelenosky (assistant) a visit.

Mysterious burrow

The course is in great shape and looks like it will be a great venue for the 2015 US Women’s Open. The course had recently been drilled-and-filled, and it made me think that we had little chance of finding insects in greens.  We saw some ant activity, but did not find any brood (larvae and pupae) in the colonies and the colonies were not overly active.  However, late in the morning we saw this on a tee box:

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This mound was created in a matter of minutes to an hour since the tee had been freshly mown.  Also the soil creating the mound did not match the subsurface layer (4-6″ below).  I took a cup to the mound and removed soil until we reached the layer of sand that was shown on the surface.  At the bottom of the core was a pile of crickets!  The crickets were twitching and could not have possibly created the mounding.

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After several minutes of watching the tee, Mike, Danny and I observed a dark wasp approaching the openings, and even one carrying a cricket on its underside and another attacking a spider:

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Campsomeris quadramaculata

The culprit appears to be a spider wasp.  Pompilids, like this one can be parasitoids of spiders and can inflict a very painful sting.  Initially, I thought it was a Scoliid wasp, which are parasitoids of white grubs.  We observed several Scoliids in the area on the hunt.  The female will can find a white grub in the soil, sting it, and deposit her egg(s) inside the larva.  The wasp’s larvae will develop inside the white grub, eventually kill it, and emerge  as an adult wasp to attack other grubs.  It appears that the crickets that they had placed in the burrows were paralyzed, and possibly parasitized. We will be observing some of the cadavers to see if any wasps develop to confirm this.

Unfortunately, these “good bugs” have been disrupting some of the tee boxes and greens and have crossed over into the pest category.  On the flip side, there are a lot of positives.  I would contend that the crew at LCC have been able to keep their grub population at low densities and have used selective insecticides that allow for beneficial insects to persist.  The wasps have probably just switched over to a more abundant food source.

My advice: Take a moment to marvel at these amazing creatures while you use a greens whip to eliminate the mounding.  You might be the only person who notices.

UPDATE: September 2, 2014:

Dr. Andy Deans the curator of the insect collection at PSU has taken a look at the photos and states:

That wasp is definitely a pompilid. It’s probably an Anoplius sp., but my expertise with that family is pretty shaky!
The cricket collector is almost certainly not a pompilid (I am 99.9% sure it’s a different wasp). My guess is some sphecid … Chlorion?

So, it looks like we were dealing with 3 wasps in that tee box: Spider wasp, white grub parasitoids, and an unknown wasp that is doing the tunneling.  The plot thickens!

 

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ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

I was challenged by John Kaminski to take the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.  Here is the video of how it went down:

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