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.
Hickory Horned Devil
An enormous, blue-green caterpillar armed with long, curved orange-red horns tipped in black, giving it a fearsome dragon-like appearance despite being completely harmless.
caterpillar-larva
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.
wasp
Grape Leaffolder Caterpillar
This small green caterpillar stitches grape leaves together with silk into a rolled shelter, feeding hidden inside its own leafy tube and leaving skeletonized patches behind.
caterpillar-larva
Hummingbird Clearwing Moth
A robust, olive-and-burgundy day-flying moth with mostly transparent wings that hovers at flowers exactly like a tiny hummingbird, unspooling a long proboscis to sip nectar.
moth
Fall Webworm
A pale, hairy caterpillar that spins loose, messy silk webs enclosing entire leaf clusters at the tips of tree branches, becoming especially noticeable in late summer and fall.
caterpillar-larva
Emerald Spreadwing
A robust, metallic green damselfly of northern wetlands, the Emerald Spreadwing rests with its wings held open in the characteristic spreadwing posture and thrives in shallow, seasonal ponds.
dragonflyGreen Lacewing
With delicate pale green wings and glittering golden eyes, the Green Lacewing is a familiar garden insect whose larvae are voracious predators of aphids and other soft-bodied pests.
other
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.
moth
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.
spider
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.
beetleDrywood 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
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
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
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.
beeBig-Eyed Bug
A small, broad-headed true bug named for its noticeably large, bulging compound eyes, the big-eyed bug is a beneficial predator that patrols low vegetation and soil surfaces for small pest insects.
true-bug
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.
beeYellow 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.
beetle
Water Strider
A slender, long-legged true bug famous for skating effortlessly across the surface of ponds and streams using water's surface tension.
aquatic-insectWandering 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.
spiderStonefly
A flattened, drab-winged insect whose nymphs are among the most reliable living indicators of pristine, well-oxygenated stream water.
aquatic-insectRoot 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