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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