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.
Pine Sawyer Beetle
A large, long-antennaed longhorn beetle of pine and spruce forests, mottled gray-brown to black, that produces a rasping sound when handled and whose larvae tunnel deep into dead or dying conifer wood.
beetleNet-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.
beetleLily 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
Mexican Bean Beetle
A copper-colored, spotted beetle resembling an overgrown ladybird that feeds on bean plant leaves along with its spiny yellow larvae.
beetle
Flower Chafer Beetle
Often clad in brilliant metallic greens, golds, and bronzes, flower chafers are day-flying scarab beetles that feed on flowers. Many buzz loudly in flight and keep their wing covers closed as they take off.
beetle
Death Watch Beetle
A mottled brown wood-boring beetle famous for the faint ticking sound it taps out inside old timbers, once thought by superstitious listeners to be an omen of death.
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
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
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
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.
beetleDiving Beetle Larva (Water Tiger)
Nicknamed the water tiger, the larva of a predaceous diving beetle is an elongated, sickle-jawed hunter that stalks the shallows and seizes prey many times its own size.
beetle
Common Housefly
A dull gray fly with four dark stripes on its thorax and large reddish eyes, one of the most widespread insects on Earth thanks to its close association with human food and waste.
flyHoverfly
A slender, bee- or wasp-patterned fly known for its remarkable ability to hover motionless in midair before darting suddenly to a new flower.
flyMaggot
A pale, legless, tapering grub that wriggles through rotting food and organic waste, the larval stage of a fly.
caterpillar-larvaJune Bug
A chunky, reddish-brown to nearly black scarab beetle that bumbles noisily around porch lights on warm late-spring and early-summer evenings.
beetle
Ladybug
A small, round, brightly colored beetle with a domed, shiny shell typically red or orange with black spots, one of the most recognizable and beloved beetles found in gardens worldwide.
beetleGall Midge
A delicate, mosquito-like fly whose larvae trigger plants to grow strange, often colorful swellings called galls, each species usually tied to one particular host plant.
fly
Cicada
A stout, big-eyed insect best known for the loud, buzzing chorus of song produced by males, and for periodical species that emerge from the ground by the millions after living underground for over a decade.
true-bugIchneumon Wasp
A slender, long-antennaed parasitoid wasp, often mistaken for a giant mosquito or a stinging insect, that is best known for the extraordinarily long ovipositor some species use to drill into wood and lay eggs on hidden larvae.
wasp
Potato Bug
A rounded, boldly striped beetle in cream and black that feeds on potato and other nightshade foliage, easily recognized by the ten black stripes running down its wing covers.
beetle
Old House Borer
A grayish-brown to nearly black longhorn beetle whose larvae bore extensively through structural softwood, capable of causing large galleries hidden beneath the wood surface.
beetleRat-Tailed Maggot
Named for its long, thin, telescoping breathing tube, the rat-tailed maggot is the aquatic larva of the drone fly, thriving in stagnant, low-oxygen water where few other insects can survive.
aquatic-insectWireworm
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
Locust Borer
A slender black longhorn beetle boldly striped with yellow, closely resembling a wasp, commonly seen visiting goldenrod flowers in autumn near black locust trees.
beetle