For school collections, you usually need to know the order. Here’s a cheat sheet for the common ones:

• Coleoptera (beetles): hard front wings that meet in a straight line down the back.
• Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths): scaly wings that leave powder on your fingers.
• Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants): two pairs of clear wings, often a narrow “waist.”
• Diptera (flies): only one pair of wings, with tiny knobs (halteres) where the back wings would be.
• Hemiptera (true bugs, cicadas, aphids): piercing, sucking beak. True bugs often have an X pattern on the back.
• Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets): big jumping hind legs.
• Odonata (dragonflies, damselflies): long body, big eyes, two pairs of netted wings.
• Neuroptera (lacewings, antlions): delicate, lacy, heavily veined wings.

Remember that spiders, ticks, and centipedes are not insects. Insects have six legs and three body parts.

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