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.
Southern Black Widow
Glossy jet-black and marked with a bright red hourglass on the underside of its rounded abdomen, the southern black widow is one of the most recognizable spiders in North America, typically found tucked into quiet, undisturbed corners rather than out in the open.
spiderSod 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.
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Great Southern White
A crisp white butterfly with contrasting black-and-white checkered wingtips, often seen in large numbers along coastal habitats and open fields of the southern United States.
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Southern Green Stink Bug
A large, shield-shaped, solid bright green true bug found on a wide variety of garden and crop plants across warm regions worldwide, recognizable by its broad body and, in some individuals, a row of small pale dots along the shoulders.
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Bristly Rose Slug
Despite its caterpillar-like, slug-shaped body covered in fine bristles, this pale green larva is actually the offspring of a small sawfly and feeds on rose leaves by skeletonizing them from the underside.
caterpillar-larvaFishfly 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-insectWax Moth
A plain grey-brown moth whose larvae tunnel through beeswax honeycomb, spinning silk webbing as they feed, making it a well-known pest of beekeeping operations.
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Grain Moth
A tiny buff-colored moth whose larvae tunnel invisibly inside individual kernels of stored grain, hollowing them out from within.
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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.
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Clothes Moth
A tiny, pale golden moth that avoids light and flutters weakly from dark closets, more often noticed by the damage its larvae leave in stored fabrics than by the moth itself.
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Lappet Moth
A large, richly textured moth with deeply scalloped, russet-brown wings that fold into an uncanny dead-leaf silhouette, one of the most convincing leaf mimics among European moths.
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Winter Moth
A small tan-brown moth unusual for flying in the cold of late autumn and early winter, with strongly dimorphic sexes: fully winged males and flightless, near-wingless females that climb tree trunks to lay eggs.
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Tomato Hornworm
A large, thick green caterpillar with diagonal white stripes and a distinctive curved horn at its tail end, often found stripping leaves from tomato plants in gardens.
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Atlas Moth
One of the largest moths in the world by wing surface area, the Atlas Moth is a giant reddish-brown silkmoth with striking triangular wingtip patches that resemble the heads of snakes.
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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.
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Eyed Hawk-Moth
A pinkish-brown hawk-moth that reveals a pair of large, blue-and-black eyespots on its hindwings when threatened, using the sudden flash of "eyes" to startle would-be predators.
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Bogong Moth
A modest brown, mottled moth famous for its extraordinary mass seasonal migration across thousands of kilometers to cool alpine caves in the Australian mountains, forming one of the largest known insect migrations by biomass.
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Bagworm
A caterpillar that constructs and lives inside a spindle-shaped case of silk and plant debris, dragging its portable shelter along as it feeds on tree foliage.
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Buff-tip Moth
A moth so convincingly disguised as a broken birch twig that it is often overlooked entirely, with silvery-gray wings and pale buff patches at the tip and base that complete the illusion of snapped, weathered wood.
mothGypsy Cutworm Moth
A plain, mottled grey-brown night-flying moth whose stout, soil-dwelling larvae are known as cutworms for their habit of severing young plant stems near ground level.
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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.
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Great Tiger Moth
A boldly patterned tiger moth with chocolate-brown and cream lace-like markings on the forewings and vivid orange hindwings spotted with blue-black, one of the most visually striking moths in temperate gardens.
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Rosy Maple Moth
A small, plush-looking moth in candy-pink and lemon-yellow, often described as one of the most vividly colored moths in North America despite its modest size.
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Cecropia Moth
North America's largest native moth, the Cecropia is a spectacular giant silkmoth with reddish-brown wings marked by crescent-shaped white spots and bold bands of red, white, and tan.
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