We received an extremely short email from a reader the other day about a black bug that looks like a worm and falls apart when it is dried out or dead. The bug also has a thick body, and it was found in Naples, Florida. The reader’s question – or technically sentence fragment – seemed to concern identification, so we’ll try to make some sense of her message, such as it is, and offer a couple of remarks about what she might have found.

The reader’s entire message reads as follows: “black bug kinda like a worm very thick body and falls apart when dried or dead naples fla.” No additional context or information was supplied, and no picture accompanied this message. Even with far more information, it can be hard to identify a bug, so let us say from the outset that we can offer nothing resembling a definitive answer to our reader’s (implied) question.

We will begin with a couple of general notes. First, the reader’s description of what she found as a “bug kinda like a worm” suggests that she might have found some sort of larvae. More often than not, the questions we receive from readers are about larvae, and this most recent email seems to be about larvae too. Second, a good way to research bug, larvae, or worm identifications is through the extension programs of local or nearby universities. In this instance, we know that the reader is in Naples, Florida (or at least the spontaneous inclusion of this location at the end of our reader’s message implies this), and the University of Florida happens to have an extension office in Collier County, where Naples is located. Extension programs are of course not exclusively concerned with bugs, but their focus on agriculture and natural resources brings them in contact with the creatures of the land. Having never engaged with the Collier County Extension Office in any depth before, we don’t know what their strengths are, but our reader might consider clicking around their site in case it turns up any helpful guides to larvae in the area.

Given how little we know about whatever our reader found, we hesitate to offer any specific identifications. However, we feel compelled to note that black soldier fly larvae came to mind when we were looking over our reader’s email. These are, of course, the larval form of black soldier flies, and they are black, worm-like creatures with thick bodies. (We don’t know what to make of the fact that the creature “falls apart when dried or dead” – this is something that will happen to any number of different bugs for the simple reasons that things start to deteriorate when they die, and that things become brittle when they are dried out.) The connection between black soldier fly larvae and the information supplied by our reader is far too tenuous to mean anything, but we would be remiss if we didn’t at least mention this initial thought of ours.

Not surprisingly, we have no specific answers to offer our reader, but perhaps the very basic information we have given her will help her unearth an identification.

• 
•