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.
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.
bee
Biting Midge
A minuscule, gray-winged fly that gathers in dense swarms near wetlands and can slip through window screens unnoticed.
fly
Common House Mosquito
A slender, drab brown mosquito that emerges at dusk from catch basins and forgotten containers to fill neighborhoods with its familiar high-pitched whine.
fly
Mole Cricket
A stout, velvety brown cricket relative with broad, shovel-like front legs adapted for digging, spending most of its life burrowing just beneath the surface of moist soil.
grasshopper-cricket
Punkie
An almost invisibly small biting fly that swarms near wetlands at dusk, where only the females take blood meals from animal hosts.
fly
Cochineal
A tiny, sedentary scale insect that lives clustered on prickly pear cacti beneath a protective coat of white, waxy fluff, historically prized for the deep red pigment it produces.
true-bug
Midge
A slender, mosquito-like fly that forms dense swarms near water at dusk, easily mistaken for a mosquito but lacking any biting mouthparts.
fly
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
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
Pill 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
Owlfly
An acrobatic, dragonfly-mimicking predator instantly given away by its long, clubbed antennae, a feature no true dragonfly ever has.
other
Leafcutter Bee
A stout, dark-bodied bee best known not for how it looks but for the neat, circular or oval notches it cuts from leaves, which it uses to line and seal its nest cells.
bee
Black Soldier Fly
A sleek, dark, wasp-like fly whose larvae are voracious decomposers of decaying organic material, while the short-lived adults do not feed at all.
fly
Great Blue Skimmer
One of North America's largest skimmers, the Great Blue Skimmer's powdery sky-blue body and pale green eyes make it stand out as it cruises woodland pond edges.
dragonfly
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.
moth
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
Spotted Wing Drosophila
A tiny reddish-brown fruit fly, each male marked with a single dark spot near the wingtip, notable for laying eggs in ripening rather than overripe fruit.
fly
Giant Desert Hairy Scorpion
The largest scorpion in North America, a robust golden-brown giant covered in fine bristles that digs deep burrows in the desert sand and hunts after dark.
arachnid
Comet Darner
One of North America's largest and fastest dragonflies, blazing across open water with a fiery red abdomen that gives it its cometary name.
dragonfly
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.
moth
Vivid Dancer
A brilliant violet-blue damselfly of western streams, the Vivid Dancer is one of the most striking members of the dancer genus and is notably tolerant of warm, mineral-rich waters.
dragonfly
Moth
A broad group of scale-winged insects related to butterflies, typically nocturnal, with stout, often furry bodies and feathery or thread-like antennae.
moth
Fruit Fly (Vinegar Fly)
A tiny tan fly with bright red eyes that seems to appear from nowhere the moment a piece of fruit begins to overripen or a splash of wine is left uncovered.
fly
Black Vine Weevil
A flightless, all-black snout beetle notorious for notching the edges of leaves at night while its underground larvae feed on plant roots and crowns.
beetle