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 Larva (Hellgrammite)
A large, fierce-looking aquatic larva with strong pinching jaws and fringed side gills, spending years hunting under stream rocks before becoming a giant winged dobsonfly.
aquatic-insect
Fireflies
A soft-bodied beetle famous for producing rhythmic, glowing flashes of light from its abdomen at dusk, used to signal and attract mates across meadows and gardens on warm summer evenings.
beetleWhite 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
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-insect
Flour Beetle
A tiny, shiny reddish-brown beetle that infests flour, cereal, and other dry stored foods, often found in dense clustered populations.
beetleJerusalem Cricket
A large, wingless, ground-dwelling insect with a shiny amber body, a strikingly human-like face, and a robust, banded abdomen, most often uncovered while digging in soil.
grasshopper-cricket
Cockchafer
A large, reddish-brown scarab beetle with distinctive fan-shaped antennae, famous for its noisy, clumsy evening flights around trees in late spring, giving rise to its alternate name, the May bug.
beetle
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.
beetleHouse Dust Mite
A microscopic, translucent mite that lives unseen in household dust, feeding on shed skin flakes accumulated in bedding and furniture.
arachnidDaddy Longlegs (Harvestman)
A leggy, one-piece-bodied arachnid that scurries through leaf litter and garden beds on impossibly long, spindly legs, easily mistaken for a spider despite belonging to an entirely different arachnid order.
arachnidDust Mite
A microscopic, translucent arachnid that lives unseen in household dust, feeding quietly on shed skin flakes within mattresses, carpets, and furniture.
arachnid
Itch Mite
A microscopic, rounded mite that spends its entire life cycle within the skin of a mammalian host, invisible without a microscope.
arachnidNo-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
Black Fly
A small, humpbacked black fly with clear wings that gathers in persistent swarms near flowing streams, favoring exposed skin around the head.
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Stable Fly
A gray fly that looks almost identical to the common house fly, but carries a rigid, forward-pointing proboscis built for piercing skin rather than sponging up liquids.
flyFollicle Mite
An elongated, microscopic mite shaped almost like a tiny worm, living deep within hair follicles and oil glands of mammal skin where it spends its entire life largely unnoticed.
arachnidCrane Fly Larva
Thick-skinned and worm-like, the crane fly larva, often called a leatherjacket, burrows through wet mud and decaying vegetation at the edges of ponds and streams, breaking down plant material as it grows.
aquatic-insectHorse Fly Larva
Hidden in the wet mud along pond and stream margins, the horse fly larva is a tapered, tough-skinned predator that hunts other small soil and mud-dwelling invertebrates before eventually transforming into the familiar biting fly.
aquatic-insectScabies Mite
A microscopic, eyeless mite that spends its entire life cycle burrowed within the outer layer of a mammal's skin, among the smallest arachnids known to science. Unlike free-living mites, it has no independent existence away from a host and is studied primarily through microscopic examination rather than direct observation.
arachnidBackswimmer
A boat-shaped aquatic true bug that swims upside down using oar-like hind legs, patrolling pond water in search of small prey.
aquatic-insectPill Millipede
A short, heavily armored millipede that rolls into a tight, perfect ball when disturbed, closely resembling a pill bug but built from far fewer, broader body segments.
myriapod
Lesser Water Boatman
A flat-backed, oar-legged true bug that rows through pond water with fringed hind legs, surfacing periodically to trap a silvery bubble of air against its body.
true-bug
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-bugOgre-faced Spider
A twig-like nocturnal spider with enormous, light-gathering eyes that weaves a small rectangular net and hurls it over passing prey in a lightning-fast ambush.
spider