Woodlouse guide

Oniscidea

Characteristics

• Woodlice, also known as pill bugs, are typically half an inch long.
• The thorax has seven pairs of legs. The abdomen features pleopods, small appendages used for breathing.
• The color varies, but they’re commonly slate grey.​​​​​

Identification

• Watching their movement can help identify a woodlouse. They crawl slowly, often stopping and starting, and tend to stay close to walls or hide in crevices. They might roll into a ball when disturbed.

Habits and habitats

• Found in cool, dark, and damp places such as under stones, logs, and leaf litter in gardens or wooded areas.
• Indoors, they may appear in basements, crawl spaces, or around plumbing where the woodlouse habitat is replicated.
• Often gather where there’s decaying organic material, which they feed on, helping to recycle nutrients in the environment.
• May enter homes when their outdoor habitat becomes too dry or waterlogged, seeking more stable shelter.

Life cycle 

• Females carry each egg in a special pouch on the underside of the body until the young hatch, a key stage in the woodlouse's life cycle.
• What hatch out are not true woodlouse larvae, but miniature versions of the adults with fewer segments.
• These young go through several molts before reaching full size.
• One or two generations per year are common, depending on the climate and stability of their habitat.