Bug Website Links
General Bug Websites
Mark Cassino's "Page 2000" website
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This private individual's website is packed with very high quality and very
artistically photographed insects and spiders, as well as other subjects
of general interest.
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Insects on the World Wide Web
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This is a list maintained by the entomology department of the University of
Vermont in the USA.
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| Insect
and Spider Collections of the World |
 This
database of insect and spider collections around the world includes a search
engine, but it only allows you to find the collection, not to find which
collections have a particular species. |
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Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Entomology Dept
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The Smithsonian Institute maintains this entomology website which includes
a database library, which contains information about the specimens in the
Smithsonian Institute collection, but no photos or species data.
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Bug Websites by Region
Asia |
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| India Nature Watch |
The best, and a little bit of the worst, of the internet. The galleries
(such as the
butterfly and moth gallery) consist of photos posted by members of
the public. Surprisingly, they're of generally good quality
but unfortunately they're totally unsorted, and there are even photos of
dragonflies, crickets and birds in the lepidoptera gallery.
With 40 large thumbnails per page, you'll eventually find what you're looking
for, but with 3790 photos in this one gallery, it might a while!
The galleries also function as forums, so this is a very good place to
ask people for an ID of what you've photographed. Last visited
in December of 2008.
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| Butterfly Circle | Go to my review of this website. |
| Chin's Butterfly Gallery | Go to my review of this website. |
| ThaiBugs.com |
Go to my review of this website. |
Latin America |
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| Neotropical Butterflies | Go to my review of this website. |
Bug Websites by Country
Australia |
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CSIRO Entomology
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insect
identification pages with photos categorized by insect or spider type,
but there's so little information here that you might as well not bother
- the "butterfly and moth" page, for instance, had exactly one photo when
I visited in October of 2003. The website is only salvaged by its
large list of images listed by
name - but each insect has its own separate page, making identification
of an unidentified insect a nightmare.
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Costa Rica |
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| INBIOS |  The
Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad is a Costa Rican scientific research
organization. The website is primarily in Spanish, but with
an English introductory section. There's a section called UBIs
which has photo galleries of various categories of animal and plant life;
it's in Spanish, but I found it useful because it has photos and latin
names for everything. |
Malaysia |
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| Chin's Butterfly Gallery | Go to my review of this website. |
Mexico |
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| Neotropical Butterflies | Go to my review of this website. |
New Zealand |
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| Insects
and Spiders of New Zealand |
This
government sponsored website is very short on information, and the website
links page has very few links to New Zealand insect and spider websites. |
Singapore |
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| Butterfly Circle | Go to my review of this website. |
Thailand |
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| ThaiBugs |
John
Moore is an amateur entymologist living near Chiang Mai in Thailand.
He has amassed a huge collection of arthropod photos from this area, split
into photo galleries arranged by the type of "bug", as well as galleries
of amphibians and snakes, which somehow includes snails and other critters!
The website has improved enormously since I lasted visited in April of 2009, the design is much
more professional and the size and quality of the photos have both increased greatly. There's very
little information about the bugs, but if you hover the cursor over the thumbnail then you'll see the scientific
name, when known. The site also has essays and blog entries on various topics. Last visited in January of 2011.
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USA |
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| What's That Bug? | This
website provides identification pages for many different types of arthropod.
Each type of insect, spider or other arthropod has one or more pages with
photos sent in by people trying to identify some bug they've found.
The photo quality is therefore not always brilliant, the photos are a little
small and each of the pages is huge, but this is still a useful resource,
though it might take a while to track down what you've seen. A more
compact photo gallery would certainly have made life easier.
Last visited in January of 2007. |
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Elytra and Antenna
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OK,
maybe they should have called it "Elytra and Antennae", but nevertheless
this website is good, with a photo gallery of America's most interesting
beetles, walking sticks, bugs, grasshoppers, crickets, katydids and giant
moths. Each photo is accompanied by a description geared towards
raising the insect in captivity. There's a separate photo
gallery of centipedes, millipedes and spiders.
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Field Guide to Common Texas Insects
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This
website by the Texas A&M University Entomology Department has photo
galleries with links to species from many different insect and non-insect
animal orders. Each link takes you to a page with a photograph
and description of the species. Unfortunately the photos in
the photo galleries are of poor quality.
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Bug Websites by Order
Ants
| Lurker's
Guide to Leafcutter Ants |
Alan
San Juan has put together a very good website devoted to leafcutter ants,
with information about their behavior and a good photo
gallery.
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Beetles
| Eudicella.com |
This
website is entirely devoted to stag beetles, rhinoceros beetles and other
members of the scarab family. Anyone who thinks that beetles
are ugly should be pointed straight to the
Eudicella website's flower beetle photo gallery, which contains about
50 photographs of exquisitely beautiful beetles. Last visited
in August of 2007. |
Butterflies
General Butterfly Information
| The
Butterfly Website |
This
website is fairly well presented, with photo
galleries for butterflies, moths and caterpillars. These
photo galleries are accessed by the name of the thing you're looking for,
which is good if you already know the name but not so good if you have
a picture of a butterfly you want to identify. The website
also has a large list
of other butterfly and moth websites. |
| WildlifeWebSite.com
- butterflies and moths |
This
website is polluted with advertising and the photo galleries aren't too
great, but it has a good "butterflies and moths of the world" section consisting
of links
to butterfly and moth websites, sorted by geographical area. |
| The
Butterfly Site |
The
"butterfly pictures" link on this commercially oriented website takes you
to an annotated list of about
30 websites with butterfly photos. |
| Electronic
Resources on Lepidoptera |
The
information on this website isn't very accessible (for instance, the lepidoptera
image archive is fragmentary and doesn't have proper thumbnails), but
there are excellent lists of links to other websites, including lists of
websites
with photo identifications, |
| The
Lepidopterists' Society |
This
scientifically oriented website is currently sitting on a university web
server, which means it might move somewhere else in the future.
Like the Association for Tropical Lepidoptera the idea of putting photos
of butterflies and moths onto the website seems to be beyond them, but
they have a huge list of scantily annotated links
to other butterfly and moth websites. Last visited in June
of 2006. |
| Enchanted Learning butterfly glossary | The
Enchanted Learning website is aimed at children and has a huge glossary
of butterfly terminology, with a page devoted to each letter of the alphabet.
Last visited in March of 2008. |
| Butterflies
of the Carolinas and Virginias |
I've
encountered Randy L. Emmett's website several times when hunting for information
on various topics. This information and photographs are always
very good; the main butterfly
page doesn't look too promising, but as soon as you select one of the
galleries things get much better. Last visited in March of
2009. |
| A
World For Butterflies |
Phil
Schappert is the author of a very good book called A World For Butterflies.
His website has information about the book, a small website
links page and a list of the websites
of some butterfly photographers whose work is in the book. |
| James
Mallet's Lepidoptera Website |
This
researcher's website contains a useful page of links to websites describing
tropical
butterflies and moths, and where to find information on heliconius
butterflies. The information is excellent, but it's very
academically oriented and very limited in scope. Last visited
in December of 2005. |
| Association
for Tropical Lepidoptera |
This
could be an extremely good website, but unfortunately it's almost totally
worthless. The Association publishes two scientific journals
but they haven't woken up to the possibilities of the internet.
I couldn't find any photographs on the website, the link to the "index
to species images" is broken and the photo registry is an inaccessible
database of slides which people are invited to contribute to.
Try back later, perhaps they'll get their act together. |
Butterfly Information by Country
Costa Rica |
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| Butterflies
of Monte Verde |
This
website does a good job of documenting the butterflies of Monte Verde in
Costa Rica. There's a useful list
of Costa Rican lepidopteran websites and a special section on Monte
Verde's clearwing butterflies. |
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The Butterfly Farm
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This
website belongs to The Butterfly Farm, which is located near San Jose in
Costa Rica. The photo galleries
are likely to appeal to browsers rather than people hoping to identify species, though most photos do contain both English and Latin names
of the pictured species. The links to these galleries are broken, but I managed to track them down. Last visited in
January of 2011.
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Japan |
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Butterflies of Japan
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This
website starts off with some annoying music which will probably drive you
to silence your computer's speakers, but the galleries of Japanese butterflies,
including their caterpillars and even some eggs, make up for this irritation!
There's an all-in-one
gallery with most of the site's butterflies, which makes butterfly
identification much faster. Unfortunately the website hasn't
been updated in the last two years. Last visited in June of
2006.
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Japanese Butterfly Gallery
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There
are some good photos on this website, unfortunately they can only be indexed
by name. If you don't know the name, then you have to scroll
through page after page, with only one species on each page.
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Malaysia |
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| Chin's Butterfly Gallery | Chin
Fah Shin is a butterfly enthusiast who lives in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia
whose website consists of photo galleries divided into families.
The larger photos aren't perfect but are more than adequate for identification
purposes and he provides the scientific and common names for each butterfly.
The website is full of commercials, both embedded and occasional popups
and there's also a little religious proselytization. Last visited
in December of 2008. |
Mexico |
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| Neotropical Butterflies | This
is a very valuable resource for identifying Mexican butterflies, with an
excellent set of butterfly
photo galleries arranged by family. It misses out on five
stars only because the photos often don't show the butterfly both with
wings open and wings closed, and because the species pages contain photographs
but next to no information about the species. Last visited
in March of 2008. |
| Mariposas Mexicanas | The
website name might be in Spanish, but this "Interactive Listing of Mexican
Butterflies" also gives you the choice of navigating in English.
The website is a bit crude and text heavy, and unfortunately it's one of
those websites which is only much good if you already known the species,
or at least the genus, of the butterfly you're interested in.
Last visited in March of 2008. |
Singapore |
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| Butterfly Circle |  This
is a more professional follow-on to the same individual's "Butterflies
of Singapore", which is now obsolete. The earlier website received
four stars because of good content, and the new website has kept all of
this content including the photo
galleries, laid it out better and incorporated a very nice looking
graphic design, though it might be better if the slightly inconspicuous "photo
checklist" entry in the navigation menu was changed to "photo gallery".
There's also a very active blog
associated with the site. Last visited in August of 2009. |
USA |
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| Butterflies and Moths | This
website is based on a now defunct website operated by the United States
Geological Survey. There are good photo galleries listed by
family, which include some caterpillar photos, but the galleries suffer
a bit because the quality of the thumbnails is uneven. Click
on a thumbnail and you'll be taken to a very worthwhile page of information
about that species. Last visited in March of 2008. |
| North American Butterfly Association |
The
North American Butterfly Association is the largest organization in North
America dedicated to butterflies. Their website has interesting
but incomplete
photo galleries
devoted to the different families of butterflies which inhabit Canada,
the USA and Mexico, as well as links
to other butterfly websites, including links to American regional butterfly
websites. |
| Georgia Lepidoptera |
This
website covers butterflies and moths in the south-east of the United States. |
| World Museum of Natural History |
When
I visited at the end of 2001, this privately owned venture had a gallery
of 77 North American butterflies and moths. |
Caterpillars
Australia |
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| Butterfly
Larvae of Australia |
The
caterpillar, butterfly and moth section of Don Herbison-Evan's website
is slightly uneven, you have to access the butterflies and moths via the
caterpillars, but it's still worthwhile and he is a real expert.
Last visited in March of 2009. |
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Costa Rica |
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Caterpillars and Parasitoids of a Costa Rican Tropical Wet Forest
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This
website doesn't seem to have been updated since 2002. Unfortunately there are no photo galleries, instead
navigation is done solely by family name and scientific name. The species pages on this website include fairly good
photographs. Last visited in January of 2011.
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Janzen and Hallwachs Caterpillars
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This is the website of a couple of people at the University of Pennsylvania, whose interest is the caterpillars of Costa Rica. | |
USA |
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Caterpillars of Eastern Forests
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This
United States Geological Survey website has photo
galleries of butterfly and moth caterpillars under the family listings,
unfortunately the photos are very small. There are an awful
lot of caterpillars shown here, but of course it's nowhere near a comprehensive
collection. Last visited on 2008/04/18. |
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What's This Caterpillar (American section)
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This
British website has several hundred photos of American caterpillars with
identifications. The thumbnails are a little bit small, and
I'm not certain that all of the identifications are correct (the American
Painted Lady looks more like a smeared dagger moth to me), but this is
a very good starting point when trying to pin down an identification.
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University of Maryland Barbosalab
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Dr
Pedro Barbosa's website has eight
photo galleries showing caterpillars from the eastern seaboard of the
USA. The photos aren't that big, but they're useable.
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| Caterpillars of North-Western Forests |
This
United States Geological Survey website is very poorly done from a photographic
point of view. Hopefully one day it will become as good as
the corresponding Caterpillars of Eastern Forests website, but in the last
three years there have been no changes apart from a reorganization which
broke many of the links. Last visited on 2008/04/18.
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Dragonflies and Damselflies
USA |
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Dragonflies and Damselflies of the United States
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As
with the other sections of the United States Geological Survey website,
the photos in the
photo galleries are too small and many species aren't represented,
however this is still a useful resource for identification.
The front page has state-by-state information as well as an excellent list
of links to
other websites. Last visited on 2005/07/13.
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Checklist of Monterey County Odonata
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In
spite of its name, this website has a photo gallery of 48 species of dragonfly and damselfly found in Monterey County,
California. The style of the website is very old, but the photos are good and the species pages are full of
interesting information. Last visited in January of 2011.
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University of Puget Sound Odonata Website
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A
website operated by the University of Puget Sound which has links to odonata
information for the USA, the Caribbean and Latin America, and other links
(but unfortunately, no thumbnails) to good quality photographs (including
many macros) of dragonflies and damselflies of North-West America. Last visited in April of 2008.
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Arizona Odonates
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A
noble effort, but unfortunately this website has no photo galleries, so you have to navigate it by the scientific name
or common name of the dragonfly or damselfly. Last visited in January of 2011.
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Mantises
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World of Mantids
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Martin
Stiewe's German website is brief and scientifically oriented, but it has
a nice gallery of mantids. Last visited in April of 2009.
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Moths
USA |
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Moths of North America
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This
website previously operated by the United States Geological Survey website
has been folded into the ButterfliesAndMoths.org
website reviewed above.
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Kirby Wolfe's Saturniidae Collection
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This
is an excellent website featuring the Saturniidae, or giant silk moths,
many of which have spectacular colors and patterns. Although
the photos are said to be low resolution, they are far superior to the
photographs found on most websites. The only thing keeping this website
from a 5 star rating is that there's no gallery - to view the photos of
moths and their caterpillars you have to click on the Latin name.
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| Web
Images of North American Moth Species |
This
frame-based website has links to photos of 6,300 North American moth species.
Unfortunately there is a high probability of bad links, because most of
the links on this site point to photographs on other sites.
Originally, to find a photo you already had to know the name of the moth,
which made identifying a moth using these photos next to impossible.
The situation has been improved slightly by an
identification page for the major families, but this still takes you
to the list of species, arranged by family. Last visited in
January of 2008. |
| Noctuid
Search |
This
website seems to be oriented towards moths as plant pests, it has a huge
list of noctuid moths arranged by their scientific names, with photos of
most of them. |
Spiders
| International
Society for Arachnology |
This
scientific website contains a good list of website
links for spiders and other arachnids such as scorpions. |
Spider Information By Country
Australia |
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Australian Museum: Spiders
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General information on various subjects, together with
a gallery of 51 Australian spider species. Last
visited in January of 2011.
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USA |
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Spiders on the Web
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This website should be called by its subtitle, "Spiders of Orange County, California".
There are about 75 photographs of spiders and arachnids here, the photographs
are very good and the spiders are mostly ones which aren't limited in range
to California. Last visited in July of 2007.
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Spiders in Ohio
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This
website has a good photo
index page which links to pages of photos of spiders ordered by family.
The thumbnails are very small and the linked photos aren't too big, either,
but this site is still a good resource for identifying American spiders.
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