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.
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.
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Cicada Killer's Prey Cicada
A large, thick-bodied, clear-winged insect best known for the loud, buzzing chorus males produce from treetops on hot summer afternoons, and a preferred prey item of the cicada killer wasp.
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Periodical Cicada
A black-bodied cicada with striking red eyes and orange-veined wings, famous for emerging in massive, synchronized broods after spending 13 or 17 years developing underground.
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Dog-Day Cicada
A stout, thick-bodied cicada with mottled green and brown camouflage patterning, named for its loud droning calls heard during the hot "dog days" of late summer.
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Cicada Killer Wasp
One of the largest wasps in North America, a robust rust-and-black or yellow-marked digger wasp that excavates burrows in bare soil and specializes in hunting cicadas to provision its underground nest.
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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.
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Digger Wasp
A solitary, ground-nesting wasp that excavates neat burrows in bare soil and provisions them with paralyzed prey for its young.
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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.
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Snail
A shelled land mollusk that carries a coiled, calcium-carbonate shell on its back and glides slowly across damp gardens and vegetation on a slime-lubricated foot.
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Psyllid
A tiny, sap-sucking hopper that resembles a miniature cicada and springs away in a blur when its host leaf is disturbed.
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Tortoise Beetle
A small, flat, disc-shaped beetle whose expanded wing covers and pronotum hide its head and legs almost entirely, giving it the look of a miniature turtle shell crawling across a leaf.
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Slug
A soft-bodied, shell-less land mollusk that glides on a muscular foot, leaving a silvery mucus trail as it forages across damp ground and vegetation.
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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.
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Spiny Orb Weaver
A small, hard-shelled orb weaver shaped like a tiny crab, with six sharp spines projecting from a brightly colored abdomen suspended in a neat wheel-shaped web.
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Green Stink Bug
A broad, shield-shaped bug in solid bright green with a shell-like appearance, easily disturbed off host plants and known for releasing a pungent odor when handled.
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Earthworm
A long, smooth, segmented soil-dweller with no legs, eyes, or shell, best recognized by its ringed body and the pale saddle-like band (clitellum) found on mature individuals.
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Woodlouse Spider
A reddish-brown spider with oversized forward-pointing jaws specialized for piercing the armored shells of woodlice, often found lurking under damp stones and mulch.
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Sowbug
A slate-gray, oval, armor-plated crustacean that shuffles through damp leaf litter on seven pairs of legs, recognizable by its overlapping segmented shell and pair of trailing tail-like appendages.
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Spur-throated Grasshopper
One of the most familiar grasshopper groups in North America, named for the small spine on its throat and known for including some of the continent's most abundant rangeland species.
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Redback Spider
A glossy black spider marked with a single bold red stripe down its back, the redback spider is one of Australia's most recognizable cobweb spiders, most often found tucked into dry, sheltered corners around homes and gardens.
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Stonefly
A flattened, drab-winged insect whose nymphs are among the most reliable living indicators of pristine, well-oxygenated stream water.
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Comet Moth (Madagascan Moon Moth)
One of the largest and most spectacular silk moths in the world, with pale yellow-to-red wings and extraordinarily long, ribbon-like tails on the hindwings.
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Rocky Mountain Locust
Once the most destructive insect in North American history, this swarming grasshopper vanished within a few decades of forming the largest insect swarm ever recorded.
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Painted Lady Butterfly
A medium-sized orange-and-black butterfly with a mosaic of white-spotted black wingtips, famous as the most widely distributed butterfly on Earth and a long-distance migrant.
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