Mole Cricket
Gryllotalpidae spp.
Mole crickets tunnel through turf roots and soil, leaving loose, spongy patches and disrupting lawn establishment.
Mole crickets are burrowing insects related to true crickets, but built for life underground. Adults are 3-5cm long, brown to greyish-brown, with a cylindrical body, small eyes, and short wings that only partly cover the abdomen. Their most distinctive feature is a pair of large, shovel-like front legs adapted for digging, which set them apart from any other turf pest. Nymphs look like smaller, wingless versions of the adults and live in the same tunnels, gradually growing over several moults before reaching maturity.
These insects spend most of their life below the surface, feeding on grass roots and organic matter, and only emerge at night or during warm, humid conditions, often after rain. Adults are capable of short flights and are attracted to lights, which is one way infestations spread between properties.
In Australia, mole crickets are most active in warmer months, from spring through to autumn, particularly in coastal and subtropical turf areas of Queensland and northern New South Wales. They favour moist, sandy or well-drained soils, which is why golf courses, bowling greens, and irrigated home lawns are common hosts.
Management relies on monitoring for early activity and disrupting the tunnel networks before populations build up. Maintaining healthy, dense turf reduces the impact of tunnelling, and keeping thatch levels low makes conditions less favourable for burrowing. Because mole crickets live deep in the soil profile, timing any intervention to coincide with nymphal stages near the surface, or periods of peak adult activity, gives the best chance of noticeable reduction.
How to identify
- Raised, spongy ridges or loose soil across the lawn surface, following the path of underground tunnels.
- Wilting or dying grass in patches, caused by root disturbance and the drying out of loosened soil.
- Small mounds of soil similar to those left by earthworms, but often part of a connected tunnel system rather than isolated piles.
- Turf that feels soft or hollow underfoot and lifts easily due to root damage below.
- Increased bird activity on the lawn, as birds probe tunnels for cricket nymphs and adults.
Field check: A simple way to confirm mole cricket presence is a soap flush — mix a small amount of dishwashing detergent with water and pour it over a suspect patch. Irritated mole crickets will surface within a few minutes if present. Alternatively, dig into a raised tunnel section; disturbed, loose soil with no obvious insect visible is a strong sign of their burrowing activity nearby.
Lookalikes: Tunnelling damage can be confused with that of African black beetle larvae or earthworm castings. African black beetle damage tends to show more distinct chewed root systems and C-shaped grubs when soil is turned over, whereas mole cricket tunnels are longer, shallower, and the insects themselves have the characteristic digging front legs rather than a grub-like body.
Registered products we stock
No products match those filters.