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.
Black Garden Ant
A familiar small, glossy black ant that forms visible foraging trails across patios and garden paths and nests beneath stones, pavers, and lawns.
ant
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
Odorous House Ant
A dark, unassuming ant best known for releasing a smell reminiscent of rotten coconut when a worker is crushed.
ant
Antlion
An insect best known for its larval stage, the doodlebug, which digs a small conical pit trap in loose sand to ambush unwary ants, while the winged adult resembles a slender, delicate damselfly.
other
Termite
A pale, soft-bodied social insect that lives in hidden colonies and feeds on cellulose in wood and plant debris, often mistaken for an ant despite belonging to an entirely different insect order.
other
Antheraea Silkmoth
A large, robust silkmoth in the genus Antheraea with broad reddish-brown to tan wings, each marked with a prominent transparent, eye-like spot, representing a group of giant moths long valued for producing wild silk.
moth
Broad-Headed Bug
A slender, dark true bug with a notably wide head, whose nymphs are remarkable ant mimics that scurry among leaf litter before maturing into fliers that resemble small leaf-footed bugs.
true-bug
Locust
A large, powerful grasshopper capable of transforming from a solitary, harmless insect into a densely packed, migrating swarm when populations surge, historically famous for devastating crops across huge regions.
grasshopper-cricket
Bordered Plant Bug
A dark, oval-bodied true bug with a distinct pale margin around its wing edges, often mistaken for a large ant or beetle when its nymphs cluster together in tight groups.
true-bug
Non-Biting Midge
A mosquito look-alike that gathers by the thousands in swirling mating swarms near lakes and ponds, despite lacking any ability to bite.
fly
Midge
A slender, mosquito-like fly that forms dense swarms near water at dusk, easily mistaken for a mosquito but lacking any biting mouthparts.
fly
Rocky Mountain Locust
Once the most destructive insect in North American history, this swarming grasshopper vanished within a few decades of forming the largest insect swarm ever recorded.
grasshopper-cricket
Emperor Moth
A striking silk moth with a large eyespot on each of its four wings, showing pronounced differences between the smaller, orange-brown, day-flying males and the larger, greyer, night-flying females.
moth
No-See-Um
A speck-sized fly so tiny it seems to vanish from sight, yet capable of swarming exposed skin near beaches and marshes at dawn and dusk.
fly
Four-spotted Skimmer
A brown, sturdily built dragonfly marked with a single dark spot on each wing, this holarctic species is famous for occasional mass emergences and long-distance swarming flights.
dragonfly
Azure Bluet
A sky-blue damselfly of quiet ponds, the Azure Bluet is named for its vivid blue coloration and is often seen resting in loose swarms over floating vegetation.
dragonfly
Common Baskettail
One of the earliest dragonflies to appear each spring, this brown, green-eyed skimmer often swarms in numbers over sunny clearings before most other species have emerged.
dragonfly
Black Fly
A small, humpbacked black fly with clear wings that gathers in persistent swarms near flowing streams, favoring exposed skin around the head.
fly
Mosquito Larva
A wriggling, comma-shaped aquatic larva that hangs from the water's surface to breathe before transforming into a flying adult mosquito.
aquatic-insect
Biting Midge
A minuscule, gray-winged fly that gathers in dense swarms near wetlands and can slip through window screens unnoticed.
fly
Robber Fly
A powerfully built, bristly-faced predatory fly that ambushes other flying insects in midair, piercing them with a stout beak-like proboscis.
fly
Mormon Cricket
A hefty, flightless katydid whose swarms can stretch for miles across western rangelands, marching en masse in search of food and mates.
grasshopper-cricket
Punkie
An almost invisibly small biting fly that swarms near wetlands at dusk, where only the females take blood meals from animal hosts.
fly
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.
fly