Field Guide

Ambush bugs are a subfamily of assassin bugs. They’re chunky, small insects with powerful grasping forelegs. They hide motionless in flowers waiting for prey to venture near.

The citrus flatid planthopper has a waxy coating and can look gray or tan. It eats a wide variety of plants.

The adult dogwood spittlebug has distinctive black and yellow markings. It feeds on dogwoods, blueberries, and their relatives.

Ebony bugs are definitely true bugs, but they look a lot like tiny, shiny black beetles. Their bodies are fat ovals. They’re almost always seen on flower clusters and immature seeds, often on members of the carrot or parsley family.

Hackberry psyllids are a genus of tiny, planthopper-like bugs. As larvae, they develop within the leaves, twigs, buds, or bark of hackberry trees. The trees form warty galls in response to their presence. In the fall, tiny adult hackberry psyllids cling to window screens.

Grayish, small, flattened, and rectangular, lace bugs have a lacy network of ridges on the wings and body. They suck nutrients from foliage with their beaks. The resulting pale spots on leaves might be the first sign of their presence.

The leafhoppers are a large and diverse family of sap-sucking, hopping insects. You can distinguish them from similar groups of hoppers by the hind legs, which have at least one row of small spines on the hind tibiae (“shins”).

The orange assassin bug, Pselliopus barberi, is about ½ inch long and is one of our most attractive non-butterfly insects. They overwinter in groups as adults under loose bark.