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.
Predaceous Diving Beetle
A sleek, streamlined beetle built for underwater hunting, carrying its own air supply as it patrols ponds in search of prey.
aquatic-insect
Asian Lady Beetle
A highly variable orange-to-red ladybird beetle, often bearing many black spots or none at all, famous for swarming into homes in large numbers during autumn.
beetle
Red Flour Beetle
A tiny, flattened, rust-red beetle found in stored flour and grain worldwide, capable of flight and closely resembling the confused flour beetle apart from the shape of its antennal club.
beetle
Spotted Cucumber Beetle
A small, elongated yellow-green beetle marked with twelve black spots across its wing covers, commonly seen on cucurbit and corn plants throughout the growing season.
beetle
Lily Leaf Beetle
A brilliant scarlet-red beetle with a jet-black head, legs, and underside that feeds almost exclusively on true lilies and fritillaries, often stripping leaves down to bare stems.
beetle
Net-winged Beetle
A soft-bodied beetle with broad, ridged wing covers patterned in bold orange or red and black bands, whose netlike wing venation and vivid coloring warn potential predators of its unpalatability.
beetle
Great Silver Water Beetle
One of the largest beetles in Europe, the great silver water beetle is a glossy jet-black giant that rows through weedy ponds carrying a silvery film of air trapped beneath its body.
beetle
Metallic Wood-boring Beetle
The North American common name for jewel beetles, emphasizing the wood-tunneling habits of their larvae, which leave telltale flattened, D-shaped exit holes in bark of stressed or dying trees.
beetle
Ten-lined June Beetle
A large, brown scarab beetle marked with bold white racing stripes down its wing covers, known for its loud buzzing flight and hissing defensive squeak.
beetle
Devil's Coach Horse Beetle
A large, matte-black rove beetle that raises its flexible abdomen up and over its back like a scorpion's tail and gapes its jaws when threatened, one of the biggest and most dramatic rove beetles in Europe.
beetle
Wireworm
Slender, shiny, and armor-hard, the wireworm is the long-lived soil-dwelling larva of a click beetle, spending years underground feeding on seeds, roots, and tubers before ever taking beetle form.
beetle
Mealworm
A tan, segmented larva with a shiny hard exoskeleton that tunnels through stored grain and flour before transforming into a darkling beetle.
caterpillar-larva
Maggot
A pale, legless, tapering grub that wriggles through rotting food and organic waste, the larval stage of a fly.
caterpillar-larva
Fireflies Larvae Glowworm
The larval form of fireflies, often called glowworms, are flattened, segmented crawlers that glow with a steady greenish light. These little predators hunt slugs, snails, and worms in damp ground.
beetle
Caterpillar
The soft-bodied, segmented larval stage of butterflies and moths, recognized by its worm-like shape, multiple pairs of stubby legs, and voracious appetite for leaves.
caterpillar-larva
Grub Worm
A plump, C-shaped, creamy-white larva with a distinct brown head, living underground where it feeds on grass and plant roots before eventually maturing into a scarab beetle.
beetle
White Grub
A pale, C-shaped larva with a brown head capsule and six stubby legs, spending its entire early life hidden underground feeding on roots before emerging as a stout May or June beetle.
beetle
Fox Moth
A stout, reddish-brown moth with a pale diagonal band across each forewing, closely resembling a fox in color, most often noticed as its large, densely furred dark caterpillar basking on open ground in spring.
moth
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
Silverfish
A wingless, silvery-gray insect with a tapered, fish-like body and three long tail bristles, known for its quick, darting movements and preference for dark, humid hiding spots.
other
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.
other
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.
fly
Regal Moth (Hickory Horned Devil)
One of the largest moths in North America, with orange-red and gray-veined wings on the adult, best known for its enormous, formidable-looking caterpillar, the hickory horned devil, a blue-green giant bristling with long orange spines.
moth
Chigger
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.
arachnid