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.
Dragonfly
A large, agile aerial predator with an elongated body, enormous compound eyes, and two pairs of strong wings held straight out to the sides at rest, often seen patrolling over water in search of prey.
dragonfly
Cucumber Beetle
A small, brightly colored beetle patterned with black spots or stripes on a yellow-green background, commonly seen crawling on the flowers and leaves of cucumber and squash plants.
beetle
Diamondback Moth
A small, slender grey-brown moth named for the pale, diamond-shaped pattern that appears down its back when the wings are folded, best known as a widespread pest of cabbage and other brassica crops.
mothDrywood Termite
A termite that lives entirely within the dry wood it feeds on, needing no soil contact at all, and revealing itself mainly through small piles of pellet-like frass pushed from tiny exit holes.
other
Cuckoo Bee
A slender, wasp-like bee that lacks pollen-carrying hairs because it never gathers its own pollen, instead sneaking into the nests of other solitary bees to lay eggs that hatch and consume the host's food stores.
bee
Crab Spider
Perched motionless atop a flower petal, often perfectly matched to its color, the crab spider is a patient ambusher that waits for pollinators to land within reach of its outstretched front legs.
spider
Damselfly
A slender, delicate relative of the dragonfly with widely spaced eyes and slim wings that fold together over its back at rest, often seen fluttering weakly among reeds and grasses at the water's edge.
dragonfly
Brown Recluse Spider
A uniformly light-brown spider with a faint violin-shaped marking on its back and only six eyes instead of the usual eight, typically found hiding in dry, undisturbed indoor and outdoor spaces.
spiderCicada Killer's Prey Cicada
A large, thick-bodied, clear-winged insect best known for the loud, buzzing chorus males produce from treetops on hot summer afternoons, and a preferred prey item of the cicada killer wasp.
true-bug
Carolina Mantis
A mottled gray-brown mantis native to the southeastern and south-central United States, smaller and more camouflaged than its introduced Chinese relative, and recognized as the state insect of South Carolina.
mantis-stick
Black Widow Spider
A glossy black, globe-bodied spider best known for the red or orange hourglass marking on the underside of the female's rounded abdomen, usually found tucked in a tangled web near ground level.
spider
Blue Orchard Bee
A small, metallic blue-black solitary bee widely valued as an efficient early-spring pollinator of fruit trees, nesting in narrow tunnels and hollow stems rather than building hives.
bee
Armyworm
A striped, greenish-brown caterpillar that gets its name from its habit of migrating in dense, destructive groups across grass and grain fields.
caterpillar-larvaWandering Spider
A large, fast-moving hunter that forages actively at night across leaf litter and low vegetation instead of relying on a web to catch its meals.
spiderYellow Scorpion
A robust, sandy-yellow scorpion of arid regions that spends daylight hours buried or hidden beneath stones, emerging at dusk to hunt.
arachnid
Vine Weevil
A slow, flightless, matte-black beetle that hides by day and emerges at night to notch neat semicircular bites from the edges of leaves.
beetleStonefly
A flattened, drab-winged insect whose nymphs are among the most reliable living indicators of pristine, well-oxygenated stream water.
aquatic-insect
Saddleback Caterpillar
An unmistakable stout caterpillar with a bright green saddle-shaped patch on a brown back, bristling with clusters of spines along its stocky body.
caterpillar-larva
Sac Spider
A pale, uniformly colored spider that spins a small silk sac retreat rather than a capture web, often found tucked into rolled leaves or corners of rooms.
spiderRoot Maggot
A small, legless white grub that lives hidden in the soil, tunneling into the roots of cabbage-family vegetables where it feeds unseen.
fly
Peck's Skipper
A tiny, tawny-orange and brown skipper with a bold, irregular yellow patch on the underside of the hindwing that looks almost like a splash of paint.
butterfly
Privet Hawk-Moth
The largest resident hawk-moth in much of northern Europe, with streaked brown forewings and a striking abdomen banded in pink and black stripes.
mothPygmy Grasshopper
A tiny, ground-hugging grasshopper with an elongated pronotum extending back over its body, often found hopping along muddy pond edges.
grasshopper-cricket
Orange-barred Sulphur
One of the largest sulphur butterflies, bright yellow with a bold band of deep orange across the forewing and a solid orange wash on the hindwing in males.
butterfly