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.
Sod Webworm
A dull, grayish-green caterpillar that hides in silk-lined burrows by day and emerges at night to chew grass blades down to the thatch.
caterpillar-larva
Regal Jumping Spider
One of the largest and most striking North American jumping spiders, with a velvety black body, bold markings, and huge iridescent green or blue-lined eyes.
spiderTube Web Spider
A sleek, cylindrical spider that lives inside a silk-lined tube and dashes out to seize insects that stumble across its radiating trip-lines.
spiderSoldier Fly
A wasp-mimicking fly with a flattened, often metallic body that spends its larval life quietly breaking down decaying plant matter or aquatic debris.
flyMayfly Nymph
A short-lived aquatic grazer with feathery gills along its abdomen, living for months underwater before a brief, spectacular mass emergence as a winged adult.
aquatic-insect
Diving Bell Spider
The world's only truly aquatic spider, famous for spinning an underwater silk bell that it fills with air, allowing it to live, hunt, and breed almost entirely submerged.
spiderTermite Swarmer
A dense, short-lived cloud of dark, equal-winged insects pouring from a crack in soil or wood, each one a would-be founder of a brand-new termite colony.
other
Luna Silkmoth
A large, pale lime-green silkmoth with long, trailing tails on its hindwings and delicate eyespots, widely regarded as one of the most striking moths in North America.
moth
Leafcutter Bee
A stout, dark-bodied bee best known not for how it looks but for the neat, circular or oval notches it cuts from leaves, which it uses to line and seal its nest cells.
bee
Fruit Fly
A tiny tan fly with prominent red eyes that swarms around overripe fruit, wine, and vinegar, appearing seemingly out of nowhere thanks to an extremely fast life cycle.
fly
Luna Moth
A large, pale lime-green silk moth with long, elegant tails trailing from its hindwings, considered one of the most striking nocturnal insects in North America.
moth
Granary Weevil
A small, shiny, dark reddish-brown to black weevil with a long curved snout that is unable to fly, spending its entire life cycle within stores of wheat and other cereal grains.
beetle
Ear Mite
A microscopic, pale mite that lives out its entire life cycle within the ear canal of its host, completing egg to adult development in a warm, sheltered environment without ever leaving.
arachnid
Fig Wasp
A pinhead-sized wasp that spends nearly its entire life inside a fig, forming one of the most tightly co-evolved partnerships in nature as it pollinates the tree in exchange for a place to lay its eggs.
wasp
Viceroy Butterfly
An orange-and-black butterfly closely resembling the monarch, distinguished by a smaller size and a distinctive black line crossing the veins of the hindwing, and long cited as a classic example of mimicry between two unrelated species.
butterfly
West Virginia White
A delicate, pure-white spring butterfly of eastern hardwood forests with faint gray veining on the underside, flying only for a few weeks each year before its short-lived toothwort host plants fade.
butterflyFishfly Larva
A flattened, armor-plated predator of stream bottoms, the fishfly larva spends one to three years underwater seizing prey with sickle-shaped jaws before briefly taking wing as a short-lived winged adult.
aquatic-insect
Bollworm
One of the most economically significant caterpillars in North American agriculture, the bollworm changes color from green to brown to pink across its life and bores into cotton bolls, corn ears, and tomato fruit alike.
caterpillar-larva
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.
grasshopper-cricket
Pseudoscorpion
A tiny, tail-less relative of true scorpions, complete with a pair of oversized pincers on a body barely bigger than a grain of rice. Often overlooked entirely, it spends its life hunting even smaller arthropods in leaf litter, bark, and sometimes old books.
arachnid
Sydney Funnel-web Spider
Glossy black and heavily built, with large fangs held ready in front of its face, the Sydney funnel-web spider shelters in a silk-lined burrow in moist, shaded ground across the Sydney region, one of Australia's most distinctive ground-dwelling spiders.
spiderChigger
A nearly microscopic mite larva that waits in clusters on grass tips for a passing host, taking a single brief meal before dropping away unseen. Only this larval stage is parasitic; the free-living adult spends its life hunting tiny prey in the soil.
arachnidToe-Biter
One of the largest true bugs in the world, the toe-biter is a broad, flattened ambush predator that lies in wait among pond vegetation, seizing prey many times its own size with powerful raptorial front legs.
true-bug
Brown Dog Tick
A uniformly reddish-brown tick with an elongated body, the brown dog tick is unusual among ticks for being able to complete its entire life cycle indoors around wherever dogs rest. It has spread to warm regions worldwide largely by traveling with its preferred host.
arachnid