Worms

• Regular worms includes the thousands of different types of earthworms that can be found all over the world. Estimates say that there are more than 2,700 kinds of earthworms, and there are millions of them, as many as 1,000,000 per acre, hiding in every acre of soil that isn't too cold, too wet or too dry for them. These include such worms as night crawlers, that dig deep under the ground and pull leaves that they find into their tunnels to eat at their convenience, or manure worms, that live in or near the edges of piles of decomposing manure and other rotting material.
  
  

Worm Diet

• Earthworms and all of their cousins eat dead matter that they find in the ground or on the surface of the soil. Many of these worms live near the surface, making shallow tunnels and coming up under leaf litter and other dead vegetation. Others live a bit deeper, digging horizontal tunnels in their search for food. The bigger worms usually live much deeper, 6 feet or more underground, dragging food into their tunnels and pushing their castings, or droppings, out onto the surface to form little piles around their holes.
  
  

Caterpillars

• Caterpillars are the form that butterflies and moths take after they hatch and before they make a chrysalis and emerge as winged adults. These insects are often called worms, even though they have legs and are not truly worms. Even their common names often include the term worm, such as the tomato hornworm and the beet armyworm. If a bush is being eaten by any type of worm, it is most likely some type of caterpillar, and not a true worm at all.
  
  

Grubs

• Another creature sometimes mistaken for a regular worm is the grub. These also live in the soil, but they consume living plants, including bushes. These are the larval form of various beetles, such as the Japanese beetle, and when they become adults they continue to eat and destroy living plants. An easy way to determine if a worm is a grub or not is if it curls into a "C" shape when disturbed. If it does, it is almost certainly a grub. If not, it is probably an earthworm.