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.
Dobsonfly
A massive, primitive-looking insect whose males brandish absurdly long, curved mandibles used for wrestling rivals rather than for feeding.
aquatic-insectStonefly Nymph
A flattened, armored aquatic nymph that clings tightly to rocks in swift, cold streams, serving as one of the most reliable signs of pristine water quality.
aquatic-insect
Dragonfly Nymph
A stocky, camouflaged underwater predator that spends months or years stalking prey along the pond bottom before transforming into an aerial dragonfly.
aquatic-insectDamselfly Nymph
A slender aquatic predator with three feathery tail gills, patiently stalking small prey among pond plants before emerging as a delicate flying damselfly.
aquatic-insect
Gray Hairstreak
A small slate-gray butterfly with thin white lines, an orange-capped black spot near the hindwing tail, and one of the broadest host-plant ranges of any North American butterfly, making it a familiar visitor to gardens and fields alike.
butterfly
Armyworm
A striped, greenish-brown caterpillar that gets its name from its habit of migrating in dense, destructive groups across grass and grain fields.
caterpillar-larva
Imperial Moth
One of the largest and most variably patterned silk moths in North America, with broad yellow wings mottled in shades of purple, brown, and pink, and a caterpillar that can grow to impressive size on a wide range of forest trees.
moth
Cabbage Looper
A pale green caterpillar with thin white stripes that arches its back into a loop as it inches along cabbage and other garden leaves.
caterpillar-larva
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
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
Cabbage White
A common, small white butterfly with one or two black wing spots, whose green caterpillars are a familiar sight feeding on cabbage-family garden plants.
butterfly
Eastern Pondhawk
A bold, ground-perching dragonfly whose bright green females and powdery blue males look almost like different species, and which readily preys on other dragonflies.
dragonfly
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.
mothWireworm
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.
beetleMaggot
A pale, legless, tapering grub that wriggles through rotting food and organic waste, the larval stage of a fly.
caterpillar-larva
Asparagus Beetle
A small, boldly patterned blue-black beetle with cream and orange-red markings that clusters on emerging asparagus spears in spring.
beetleYellow Scorpion
A robust, sandy-yellow scorpion of arid regions that spends daylight hours buried or hidden beneath stones, emerging at dusk to hunt.
arachnid
Spring Azure
One of the earliest-flying small blue butterflies of spring, with soft pale-blue upperwings, a whitish gray underside dotted with faint dark markings, and no tails on the hindwing.
butterfly
Northern Mole Cricket
A stout, velvety brown cricket with shovel-like front legs built for tunneling through damp soil, more often heard as a low buzzing trill at night than seen above ground.
grasshopper-cricket
Meadow Spittlebug
A small, mottled hopping true bug whose immature nymphs are far more often noticed than the adults, hidden inside frothy blobs of white foam known as cuckoo spit on plant stems.
true-bug
Checkered White
A white butterfly patterned with irregular gray-black checkered spots, commonly fluttering low over open, sunny, weedy fields across much of North America.
butterfly
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
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.
caterpillar-larva
Eastern Comma
A ragged-edged orange-and-brown woodland butterfly named for the small, silvery comma-shaped mark on the underside of its hindwing, with a cryptic dead-leaf pattern that camouflages it perfectly when its wings are closed.
butterfly