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The following is an excerpt from a handout prepared for
Entomology 111: Insects and Human Affairs at the
University of California/Davis.
"Potato bug" is a common name used to refer to the three very different arthropods pictured above-- none of which is a true bug (since, technically, the term "bug" is reserved by entomologists to refer to insects of the order Hemiptera).Sometimes the name 'potato bug' is used to refer to the insect on the right in the cartoon, Leptinotarsa decemlineata . More properly called the (Colorado) potato beetle , since it is a member of the insect order Coleoptera, it is a serious pest of the leafy, above-ground portions of potato vines in many parts of the United States.
More often, however, people use the term 'potato bug' (or sowbug, pillbug or rolly-polly) in connection with a creature that is not even an insect. Sowbugs, like Oniscus asllus , on the left in the cartoon, belong in the class Crustacea, in the order Isopoda, the same order as that of the common crawdad or crayfish. Sowbugs are the only living examples of completely terrestrial crustaceans.
"Potato bug" is sometimes used to refer to yet a third animal, the Jerusalem cricket, Stenopelmatus fuscus . Jerusalem crickets are insects of the order Orthoptera, like other crickets, grasshoppers, locusts and katydids.
Both Jerusalem crickets and sowbugs live in damp, decaying material (like those old potatoes sitting in the bottom cupboard in your kitchen) and help to recycle organic material (although the Jerusalem crickets can be predaceous and sowbugs may sometimes become pests of young greenhouse plants).
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