Bug Encyclopedia
Search and identify bugs & insects — beetles, butterflies, moths, ants, bees, spiders and more — with size, habitat, danger, behavior, and how to tell them apart.
Field Cricket
A stout, dark cricket whose loud, rhythmic chirping is one of the most familiar summer and fall night sounds in fields and lawns across much of the world.
grasshopper-cricket
Cabbage White Butterfly
A small, plain white butterfly with one or two black spots on each forewing and dark wingtips, one of the most common and widespread garden butterflies in the world.
butterfly
Fire Ant Queen
The reproductive powerhouse of a fire ant colony, noticeably larger than the reddish worker ants and equipped with wings before she sheds them to found a new nest.
ant
Comet Darner
One of North America's largest and fastest dragonflies, blazing across open water with a fiery red abdomen that gives it its cometary name.
dragonfly
Banded Garden Spider
A large orb weaver with a silvery, banded abdomen striped in yellow and black, spinning a distinctive zigzag stabilimentum through the center of its web.
spider
Rosy Maple Moth
A small, plush-looking moth in candy-pink and lemon-yellow, often described as one of the most vividly colored moths in North America despite its modest size.
moth
Acorn Weevil
A small brown weevil with an extraordinarily long, thread-thin snout, often longer than its own body, which it uses to drill into developing acorns before laying its eggs inside.
beetle
Vivid Dancer
A brilliant violet-blue damselfly of western streams, the Vivid Dancer is one of the most striking members of the dancer genus and is notably tolerant of warm, mineral-rich waters.
dragonfly
Speckled Wood
A dappled brown-and-cream butterfly that thrives in the sun-flecked shade of woodland edges, where it perches on sunlit leaves to defend its territory.
butterfly
Gulf Fritillary Caterpillar
A vivid burnt-orange caterpillar bristling with rows of branched black spines that specializes almost exclusively on passionflower vines.
caterpillar-larva
Harvester Ant
A large, industrious desert ant that clears a bare, sunburned disk of ground around its nest entrance while collecting and storing seeds by the thousands.
ant
Carpenter Ant
A large, often shiny black ant that excavates smooth tunnels in dead or damp wood for nesting, recognizable by its size, evenly rounded thorax, and elbowed antennae.
ant
Trichogramma Wasp
Barely larger than a speck of dust, the trichogramma wasp is one of the tiniest insects known. These minute parasitoids lay their eggs inside the eggs of moths and butterflies.
wasp
Thorn Bug
A tiny treehopper whose greatly enlarged, thorn-shaped pronotum lets it disappear in plain sight among the real thorns of the branches it clusters on.
true-bug
Common House Fly
A dull gray fly with four dark stripes down its back, the house fly is one of the most familiar insects on Earth, following people and their food waste to every continent.
fly
Comb-footed Spider
A diverse family of spiders defined by a row of tiny serrated bristles on their hind legs, used like a comb to fling silk over prey and wrap it up in an instant.
spider
Soil Centipede
An extremely long, thin, worm-like centipede with dozens of leg pairs that burrows through soil using its elongated body rather than speed to get around.
myriapod
Striped Bark Scorpion
A slender, tan scorpion marked with two bold dark stripes down its back, often found tucked under bark, rocks, or debris across the central United States.
arachnid
Silver-spotted Skipper
A large, chunky brown skipper instantly identified by the bold, translucent silvery-white patch splashed across the underside of each hindwing.
butterfly
Kissing Bug
A dark, elongated true bug with a narrow, cone-shaped head and distinctive orange or red markings along the edges of its abdomen, most active at night.
true-bug
Spittlebug
A small hopping true bug best known in its nymph stage, which surrounds itself in a frothy mass of white foam on plant stems, commonly called cuckoo spit.
true-bug
Bark Louse
A small, soft-bodied insect often seen in dense, moving herds on tree trunks, the bark louse grazes on algae, lichen, and fungal residue coating bark surfaces.
other
Prince Baskettail
One of the largest baskettail dragonflies, the Prince Baskettail is often seen tirelessly patrolling back and forth over water and open fields, rarely pausing to land.
dragonfly
Fishfly
A smaller, more modestly built cousin of the dobsonfly, often mistaken for its larger relative but lacking the dramatic elongated mandibles of male dobsonflies.
aquatic-insect