How to ID Your Bug

We get lots of requests here from people who would like help identifying a  caterpillar, moth or butterfly that they have found. We honestly don’t know everything or even a large portion of everything there is to know about lepidoptera, but we have learned some handy tricks for identification.
First if you are looking at a moth or butterfly then determine which you are looking at. We posted a guide a while ago about how to identify the differences between moths and butterflies. Go through the checklist and find out what sort of creature you are dealing with.
Here are some great sites that help us to identify butterflies and moths in North America:

• Discover Life Caterpillar Identification Guide: This handy guide lets you plug in the main features of the caterpillar you are trying to identify and then narrows the list down to a more manageable size.
• Discover Life Butterfly Identification Guide: This interactive guide lets you plug in basic features like color and wing shape and then further refine your search by region and even tiny characteristics.
• Discover Life Moth Identification Guide: This guide helps to narrow down moths based on color, wing shape, range and time of year observed. Adding details like wing spots and types of wing edging helps to narrow the field further.
• Butterflies and Moths of North America provides regional checklists that can be narrowed down by state and then county. These lists will show butterflies, moths or both with links to information pages about each species.
• Florida Wildflowers and Butterflies website allows you to search butterflies by their color and location.
• InsectIdentification.org allows you to search a huge database of insects based upon features you have observed in your insects. Unfortunately their butterfly and moth database is still pretty small.

If you are totally lost then you can try submitting an image of your bug to these sites

• Bug Guide ID Request page allows you to post and image of your insect after you have created an account and logged in.
• What’s That Bug allows you to mail in an image of your insect to the folks that run the website and they will have a go at identifying it for you.
• Project Noah is a social networking site that lets you upload wildlife images via your computer or a smart phone application. Just click the box that reads “Help me ID this species” and perhaps someone in the friendly Project Noah community might have an answer for you.

If you want to have some good books on hand, we can recommend the following books as helpful identification guides. The sources listed here mostly pertain to Florida or the eastern portion of North America.

• Florida Butterfly Caterpillars and Their Host Plants by M. Minno, J. Butler, D. Hall
• Caterpillars of Eastern North America by David Wagner
• Florida’s Fabulous Butterflies by T. Emmel and B. Kenney
• Butterflies of North America (Kaufman Field Guides) by J. Brock and K. Kaufman
• A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies (Peterson Field Guide) by P. Opler and R Peterson
• Butterflies through Binoculars: The East A Field Guide to the Butterflies of Eastern North America (Butterflies Through Binoculars Series) by J Glassberg
• Florida Butterflies and Wildflowers Brochures can be found at lots of location like MOSI, or you can print out your own at home. This handy fold-out brochure shows clear images of lots of Florida butterflies.