Field Guide

The Carolina grasshopper is frequently seen in dusty, open habitats like dirt roads and vacant lots. Its yellow-bordered, black hindwings make it look like a mourning cloak butterfly.

The lichen grasshopper sticks to sunny, rocky areas, such as the many rocky glades and hilltops in the Ozarks, where lichens are plentiful. It is perfectly camouflaged there.

Many apid bees are well-known. This family includes the familiar honeybee, bumblebees, and carpenter bees, plus many that are less well-known. With few exceptions, most of Missouri's apid bees are native, solitary species.

The eastern Hercules beetle is a breathtaking animal. Like its Greek-hero namesake, it is big and strong. Males have horns; females do not. Hercules beetles are harmless to people.

Blue dasher males and females look quite different. Both have a white face, a black abdomen tip, and slanted black and yellow stripes on the thorax. But males are blue and females are striped black and yellow.

The male blue corporal has a rather dark blue body, a black head, and dark marks at the wing bases. Females and young males are brownish and have two short "corporal" stripes on the side of the thorax, behind the eye.

The black saddlebags is a dragonfly with memorable markings. Two dark blotches on each hindwing look like saddlebags.

The eyed click beetle is only one of about 1,000 species of click beetles in North America. Most of the others are drab in comparison.

The spotted lanternfly has not yet been found in Missouri, but it is present in several eastern states. It has the potential to damage our forests and food supply by feeding destructively on trees and crops.

Bot flies are chunky, beelike flies usually with rounded heads. Adults are not commonly seen. The larvae are short, pudgy, segmented grubs that live as parasites in the tissues of animals. Those that live just under the skin often form a bulge. Some types live in the nasal or throat cavities of deer.