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.
Migratory Locust
A grasshopper with a split personality, the migratory locust can switch from a quiet, solitary green insect into a boldly marked swarming form that travels in enormous, crop-devouring bands.
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Two-Spotted Stink Bug
A boldly patterned black-and-orange predatory stink bug named for the pair of dark spots on its back, best known for hunting Colorado potato beetle larvae in gardens and fields.
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Desert Locust
A large, powerful grasshopper capable of forming some of the most extensive and historically devastating insect swarms on Earth, transforming from a solitary desert dweller into a densely packed migrating horde under the right conditions.
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Red-Shouldered Bug
A dark, flattened true bug with a bright red-orange collar across its shoulders, often seen clustering beneath goldenrain trees and other soapberry-family hosts.
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Ghost Mantis
A small, angular mantis crowned with a leaf-shaped crest, so thoroughly disguised as a withered leaf that it seems to vanish into dead foliage.
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Elm Seed Bug
A slim, brownish-orange seed bug that develops on elm seeds and becomes a familiar autumn nuisance as it seeks shelter on sun-warmed walls and window frames.
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Spotted Camel Cricket
A wingless, humpbacked cricket relative with mottled markings and enormous hind legs, more often found lurking in damp basements and cellars than singing in a meadow.
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Mason Bee
A compact, metallic blue-black bee that nests in existing narrow cavities and seals its brood cells with mud, prized as one of the most efficient early-spring pollinators of fruit trees.
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Pygmy Grasshopper
A tiny, ground-hugging grasshopper with an elongated pronotum extending back over its body, often found hopping along muddy pond edges.
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Wasp
A slender-waisted, smooth-bodied flying insect typically banded in black and yellow, recognizable by its narrow 'wasp waist' and folded wings, and often social, building paper nests in colonies.
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Northern Mole Cricket
A stout, velvety brown cricket with shovel-like front legs built for tunneling through damp soil, more often heard as a low buzzing trill at night than seen above ground.
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Skipper Butterfly
A stocky, fast-darting butterfly with a large head, hooked antennae tips, and thick furry body, intermediate in appearance between butterflies and moths, named for its quick, skipping flight.
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Band-winged Grasshopper
A camouflaged grasshopper that flashes vivid yellow, red, or blue hindwings in flight before vanishing again into the dust the instant it lands.
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Hornet
A large, robust social wasp with a reddish-brown and yellow patterned body, notably bigger than yellowjackets, building enclosed papery nests often high in tree cavities or wall voids.
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Spur-throated Grasshopper
One of the most familiar grasshopper groups in North America, named for the small spine on its throat and known for including some of the continent's most abundant rangeland species.
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Mourning Cloak Butterfly
A deep maroon-brown butterfly bordered with a cream-yellow band and a row of iridescent blue spots, unusual among butterflies for overwintering as an adult and being one of the first to appear in early spring.
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Mormon Cricket
A hefty, flightless katydid whose swarms can stretch for miles across western rangelands, marching en masse in search of food and mates.
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Swallowtail Butterfly
A large, showy butterfly named for the elongated, tail-like extensions on its hindwings, often seen gliding gracefully around gardens and flowering meadows.
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Fork-tailed Bush Katydid
Slimmer and greener than its treetop relatives, the fork-tailed bush katydid lives among shrubs and garden plants, with males identified by the distinctive forked appendages at the tip of the abdomen that give the species its name.
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Moth
A broad group of scale-winged insects related to butterflies, typically nocturnal, with stout, often furry bodies and feathery or thread-like antennae.
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Common True Katydid
A living leaf that spends its life high in the treetops, the common true katydid is far more often heard than seen, producing the loud, rasping "katy-did, katy-didn't" chorus that fills eastern summer nights.
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Horse Fly
A stout, fast-flying fly with large iridescent eyes and a heavy, robust body, known for its persistent, buzzing pursuit of large mammals on warm summer days.
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Eastern Lubber Grasshopper
One of the largest grasshoppers in North America, the eastern lubber is a slow, flightless giant clad in bold black, yellow, and red that announces its presence rather than hiding from it.
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Blow Fly
A brilliant, metallic green fly that gleams like a jewel in sunlight, quickly locating decaying material with an acute sense of smell.
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Snowy Tree Cricket
Nicknamed the thermometer cricket, this pale, delicate insect sings a steady, rhythmic chirp whose pace rises and falls so predictably with temperature that its chirp rate can be used to estimate the air temperature.
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Deer Fly
A small but aggressive fly with strikingly patterned, dark-banded wings and bright green or gold eyes, often circling the head and shoulders while hunting for a blood meal.
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Cactus Fly
A slender, long-legged desert fly that specializes in breeding within the soft, fermenting tissue of decaying cactus, particularly saguaro and other columnar cacti.
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Fungus Gnat
A small, dark, mosquito-like fly with long legs and delicate smoky wings, often seen weakly fluttering around houseplants or crawling across damp potting soil.
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Punkie
An almost invisibly small biting fly that swarms near wetlands at dusk, where only the females take blood meals from animal hosts.
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Gnat
A catch-all common name for a wide range of tiny, delicate flies, some no bigger than a grain of pepper, often seen hovering in small clouds near water, moist soil, or overripe produce.
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Greenhead Fly
A stout, strikingly green-eyed horse fly that emerges from Atlantic salt marshes in midsummer swarms, where the females bite to feed on blood.
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Potato Bug
A rounded, boldly striped beetle in cream and black that feeds on potato and other nightshade foliage, easily recognized by the ten black stripes running down its wing covers.
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Gall Midge
A delicate, mosquito-like fly whose larvae trigger plants to grow strange, often colorful swellings called galls, each species usually tied to one particular host plant.
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Snout Beetle
A small beetle instantly recognized by its elongated, downward-curving snout, tipped with chewing mouthparts, used to bore into seeds, nuts, stems, or fruit.
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Marsh Fly
A slender, unassuming fly best known for larvae with a remarkable diet: nearly every species in the family feeds on aquatic or terrestrial snails and slugs, making marsh flies natural specialists in wetland food webs. Adults are often found resting quietly on sedges and other marsh vegetation near the water's edge.
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Soldier Beetle
A slender, soft-bodied beetle in orange and black or yellow and brown, often seen clustered on late-summer flowers where it feeds on pollen, nectar, and small insects.
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Tachinid Fly
A bristly, house-fly-like insect that looks unremarkable at a glance but hides one of the most important ecological roles among flies: its larvae develop as internal parasites of caterpillars, beetles, and other insects, quietly regulating populations across the landscape. Gardeners often welcome tachinid flies as natural allies against crop-damaging pests.
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Tiger Beetle
A fast, metallic-hued ground beetle with oversized sickle-shaped jaws that sprints and short-flies down open sandy trails in pursuit of tiny prey.
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Long-Legged Fly
A jewel-bright little fly that flashes metallic green, blue, or bronze in the sunlight as it darts across leaves on comically long, stilt-like legs, pausing to perform quick territorial displays. Both adults and larvae are active hunters of even smaller insects, making this tiny fly a useful predator in gardens and wetlands alike.
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Walking Stick
A remarkably twig-like insect with a long, slender, brown to green body and thin legs, so effective at mimicking a plant stem that it can be nearly invisible while motionless on vegetation.
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March Fly
A stout, all-black fly that emerges in sudden, dense swarms during the first warm days of spring, often dangling its long hind legs conspicuously in slow, low flight over grass. Its name comes from its habit of appearing reliably around the start of the month, sometimes on cue near a particular saint's feast day in the traditional European calendar.
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Lacewing
A delicate, pale green insect with large, transparent, intricately veined wings and shining golden or copper-colored eyes, valued as a natural predator of aphids in its larval form.
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Screwworm Fly
A metallic blue-green blowfly whose larvae are unusual among maggots for feeding on living tissue rather than carrion, drawn to even small open wounds on warm-blooded animals. The species has been the target of one of the most successful large-scale insect eradication campaigns in history across much of North America.
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Flea Beetle
A tiny, shiny beetle that springs away like a flea when disturbed, leaving characteristic small round holes peppered across the leaves it feeds on.
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Bot Fly
A stocky, bumblebee-mimicking fly whose adults never feed and live only long enough to mate and locate a rodent or rabbit burrow for their eggs. Despite their harmless, buzzing adult stage, bot flies are best known through the larvae that develop as internal parasites of small mammals.
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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.
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Louse Fly
A flattened, leathery-bodied fly that clamps onto fur or feathers with stout claws and scuttles sideways like a tiny crab rather than taking flight when disturbed. Several species shed their wings for good once they settle on a permanent host, spending the rest of their lives buried in fleece or plumage.
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Colorado Potato Beetle
A rounded, boldly striped yellow-and-black beetle that is one of the most notorious defoliators of potato plants, easily spotted marching across leaves in gardens and fields.
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