Blog dedicated to identification of "bugs" (all manner of small invertebrate animals) and bug-related posts. Corrections + help welcome. CURRENTLY INACTIVE.
Note: I am currently inactive! You can tag/send photos but there’s no guarantee I’ll get to them
hi! I am a blog dedicated to bugs and figuring out what bug is in an image. I take requests and look at “help what is this bug!!” posts, but may also identify the bug in various popular/trending posts. You can @ me if you want a bug id of a particular post.
ID information
I will identify: arachnids (mites, scorpions, spiders), myriapods (millipedes, centipedes), insects (ants, bees, beetles), certain decapods (only lobsters + crabs). Basically any little critter you see on the ground is under here.
* animals mentioned in brackets are not a full list, just some well-known examples
You can send but I may be bad at identifying: juveniles, larvae
I will NOT identify: non-invertebrate, prehistoric species, any aquatic bug not mentioned above
Complete ID format
Basic: [for a quick answer such as “beetle” or “moth”.]
Species: [full common name and full scientific name if possible. if not, as far as I can narrow it down to]
Sending a bug photo
Please send a clear photograph of the bug in question for a full id. I may respond to text/blurry photos but they're hard to fully id
Location is really useful for helping to narrow down a species, please include it if possible!
Photos of the top of the bug are preferred. Multiple photos of different angles are best.
Send bugs through ask box.
Other useful id resources
iNaturalist / Seek (website/app)
r/whatisthisbug (subreddit)
BugGuide (website, north american bugs only)
Blog information
Currently this blog is only ran by one person. I am NOT a professional entomologist/arachnologist. I am just an autistic person who loves bugs and wants to help others and expand their own knowledge. Because of this, I will always welcome corrections and help. Some bugs can only be identified by use of a microscope, there is no guarantee I can correctly identify it.
There are a lot of bug photos here (duh!) all will be correctly tagged. If you have a phobia please block all tags relating to what you are scared of.
Tags
#bug id = bug identification posts
#unidentified = unidentified bug posts. Help wanted in most cases. (Note: if a bug doesn’t have its exact species listed but the OP doesn’t want/need that, it will NOT be tagged with this)
i found this very tiny spider a while ago but wasn’t really able to identify it. found in central texas :)
Basic: spider
Species: a Gnaphosid? possibly an Eastern parson spider (Herpyllus ecclesiasticus)??
that guy is hard to identify! still not 100% sure on this one, the pattern is slightly off and this guy is very grey. I even checked the entire list of Texas spiders to see if I had any better ideas but I don’t, so I’ll stick with this guess. I think this guy is a juvenile (100% will be if he is an eastern parson spider) which I believe is the source of my troubles
hey! it’s probably been obvious based on the fact for the last few months I have rarely posted, and if I have, its something that isn’t identifying a bug. but basically, due to a lack of free time and mental health issues, I probably won’t be identifying bugs for a long while.
just thought I’d make this message official since I got a message in my inbox of a lovely spider, who I plan on id-ing when I can, but after that it’ll probably it.
still love the bug community and love bugs. this is an account I love and one I plan on returning to, but not for the foreseeable future.
Someone: Very clearly, explicitly explains that every single species of invertebrate is important in some way to the environment and how insect populations keep dropping which could literally cause ecological collapse if they were to all go extinct
Some absolute genius, every single fucking time: This is it......... This is the perfect post to talk about how much I hate mosquitos/ticks/spiders/wasps on and go "Haha but those icky bad evil mean bugs I hate are an exception right lol???"
you know how medical doctors can lose their license over malpractice? i think it would be funny if we did that for other types of doctors. this botanist fucked up so bad we're yoinking their phd
You joke but in the bug community we had a whole scandal with a guy who got his doctoral dissertation withdrawn alongside many other papers of his. He specialised in personalities and social behaviour of animals - notably spiders. Did a lot of stuff to do with spider social niches.
He basically falsified and fabricated data, including stuff like duplicating data. He also had very poor record keeping.
He lost his job and his credit within the scientific community. Apparently the guy is writing fantasy novels now as a kind of “haha! I can’t get any more allegations I’m making stuff up now, since that’s the point of fantasy!” the book is about spiders too I think
So yeah, naughty behavioural ecologists get their phd dissertation paper yoinked
Ant and bee queens hog so much attention away from termite queens that in video games sometimes they give the termite queen's iconic giant wormy abdomen to ants or bees. Only termite moms have the humongous giant ass a hundred times bigger than their body!!
And unlike ants or bees who mate just once the termite queen has a little king who stays with her for life (decades!) to just keep mating.
Also I say this a lot but new people are awed every time so ants and bees are just variants on wasps but termites are a type of cockroach.
I agree that no ant queen can top the termite queens HOWEVER army ants have dichthadiigyne queens. Dichthadiigyne means a queen with an exceptionally large gaster, this is because army ant queens lay the most eggs of all ant queens-- and since they are laying so many eggs they run out of sperm and may mate again later in life. Male ants find a colony and go inside, mate and then their body is recycled.
The termites have more romance, I suppose. Ants don't seem to have a concept of males doing anything after they mate. They all just die.
Normally one time is enough to supply enough sperm for an ant queen's life... she keeps the cells separate and alive in a special organ called a spermatheca... I don't think termites have a spermatheca, so the male needs to hang around.
But the army ants lay so many eggs that they use up all the sperm... hence they send out pheromones to attract new suitors.
But WAIT! you cry out. Army ants live on the run. How can these fat ass queens keep up with their millions of running carnivorous daughters?
They slim down for their running stage. Total body transformation. The queens can run just like all the rest!
hello! Im not sure if this has been asked/answered before but whats your method on identifying bugs? And if you use identification guides are there any you recommend for beginner bug lovers?
I have answered before but tumblr's search function is failing me so I can't find the posts.
If you're an absolute beginner and need to learn the identifying characteristics of each type of bug, i.e. beetle vs true bug vs hymenopteran vs dipteran, etc., I would say look for a physical field guide for your region. They will often have a section in the front or back that breaks down the characteristics of the most common groups. I can't recommend a specific book without knowing where you live, though.
Otherwise, if you've already got that down, I think physical field guides can be limiting and I would recommend using both iNaturalist.org/observations (NOT the app) and bugguide.net so you can sort possible ID options by location and type of bug to narrow it down and then look at photos to find a good match. More than anything else, attention to detail is absolutely necessary.
on the topic of bug related documentaries, are there any that you would recommend?
Yeah! Dragons and Damsels is one of my favorites as well as Ant Mountain. Both of those are narrated by David Attenborough which is always a bonus. They were on Curiosity Stream but I can't confirm that anymore.
Dissecting Insects was also great, but I think they pulled that from Curiosity.
The Fascinating Lives of Butterflies is good, and that's available on youtube for free, and so is Planet Ant: Life Inside the Colony. Oh and The Queen of Trees which is all about fig wasps.
Life in Color has some good brief bug content, and so does Life On Our Planet in a few of the episodes. I would recommend those both beyond the bug content.
If anyone else has any recs, I'm always looking for good bug content to watch :)
While entomology is trending: a legit list of bug projects worth donating to/participating in.
Did not have "frozen bug man asking to borrow an outlet is a potentially fraudulent misogynist" on my entomology bingo card for this year, so trying to do something good with the fact that entomology is currently trending, here's a list of what SHOULD BE (I am no longer confident) good bug projects to donate to/participate in if you feel so inclined! Please also add good bug projects if you know any! Click the names of the institutions to find ways to donate.
The Frost Entomology Museum - Part of Penn State University, which has started up its public insect fair again this year! The museum has a "Hexapod Haiku Challenge," and I'm screaming.
The Lost Ladybug Project - Fair warning that the main webpage for it looks mildly sketch, but I can find it in multiple places that it's a real project of Cornell. It has a citizen science component where you can photograph specimens for them (no killing bugs)!
The Smithsonian Natural History Museum Department of Entomology
The Big Bug Hunt - An international project that appears to have the backing of multiple universities. It's a citizen science project to track the movements of bugs that are both detrimental and beneficial to crops. I am honestly not sure how this will affect the bugs though because the point is to protect home gardeners' crops from them.
University of California Riverside Department of Entomology
Cornell University Department of Entomology Giving Page - There's a tab at the right with three different projects of theirs: The Cornell University Insect Collection Fund, the Lost Ladybug Project Fund, and the Pollinator Health Research Fund
Michigan State University Department of Entomology - They have A BUNCH of named entomology funds you can donate to, or you can give them money that they can use flexibly.
MS Bug Blues - An invasive insect education program from the Mississippi State University Outreach program
Monarch Butterfly and Pollinators Conservation Fund - administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, it's a public-private partnership to conserve Monarch Butterflies and at-risk polinator species.
My cousin found this spider on our front porch and wanted to know what kind it was. Sorry for not getting a good view of the top of it, any time we messed with the lid it would try to climb up the side. It's really big too, like the size of a jawbreaker. (That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I can't think of anything else to compare it to)
Found in Eastern Oregon
Basic: spider
Species: an orb-weaver for sure. Probably European garden spider (Araneus diadematus), also known as cross orb-weaver. I can’t really tell from the photos too well but if it has white spots on the top of the abdomen that form cross(es) its definitely this. This species has size dimorphism, so this one is probably a female
time lapse of a banded sphinx moth caterpillar (Eumorpha fasciatus) devouring a water primrose leaf
(Florida, 9/18/22)
E. fasciatus caterpillars are heavily polymorphic and come in several different color morphs- those stripy rainbow ones are from the same population as the green one.
another neat thing about these guys is that most caterpillars drown easily, but since water primrose (Ludwigia) usually grows in standing water, E. fasciatus caterpillars have a propensity for swimming and are often seen wriggling their way through lakes when they need to come ashore to pupate.