Field guide · 15 specimens
The Insect Atlas
Every card is a field note: what the creature is, where it lives in Florida, what it eats, how careful you should be, and one fact worth telling everyone at dinner.
🦋
Monarch Butterfly
Butterfly Safe
The king of butterflies, famous for its bright orange wings with bold black lines. Some Florida monarchs skip the long migration to Mexico and live here all year round.
- Lives in
- Gardens, parks and meadows all over Florida — anywhere milkweed grows.
- Eats
- Adults sip flower nectar. Caterpillars eat only one thing: milkweed leaves.
🔎Curious fact: Milkweed makes monarchs taste terrible to birds — eating it as caterpillars gives them a built-in shield.
🐜
Fire Ant
Ant Do not touch
Small reddish-brown ants that build dome-shaped dirt mounds in sunny places. Step on a mound and hundreds rush out — and their stings burn like fire. Give mounds plenty of space.
- Lives in
- Sunny lawns, parks, fields and sidewalk edges. Fresh mounds pop up after rain.
- Eats
- Insects, seeds, and sweet or greasy food scraps — fire ants are not picky.
🔎Curious fact: When floods come, fire ants link their legs together and float away as a living raft.
🐝
Honey Bee
Bee Be careful
The fuzzy golden worker that pollinates fruits and vegetables — about one of every three bites of food needs pollinators like her. Bees ignore you if you stay calm and never swat.
- Lives in
- Gardens, orchards and flower patches everywhere; hives live in hollow trees or beekeepers' boxes.
- Eats
- Nectar (turned into honey) and pollen from flowers.
🔎Curious fact: Bees do a "waggle dance" — a wiggling figure-eight that tells hive-mates exactly which direction the best flowers are.
The flying ace of Florida's ponds. Dragonflies were zooming around before the dinosaurs, and today they patrol the water like tiny helicopters — eating mosquitoes as they go.
- Lives in
- Ponds, lakes, marshes and the Everglades — anywhere near calm fresh water.
- Eats
- Mosquitoes, gnats and other small flying insects, caught right out of the air.
🔎Curious fact: Dragonflies can fly backward and catch about 95% of the prey they chase — one of the best hunters in the whole animal kingdom.
A small, round, polka-dotted beetle that gardeners cheer for. Ladybugs are gentle with people but fierce with the tiny pests that hurt plants.
- Lives in
- Gardens, farms and any plant covered in aphids — its favorite snack bar.
- Eats
- Aphids and other tiny plant pests — up to 5,000 aphids in one ladybug lifetime.
🔎Curious fact: That bright red shell is a warning sign to birds that means "I taste terrible!"
🦟
Mosquito
True Fly Be careful
Florida's most famous (and least favorite) insect. Only the females bite — they need blood to make their eggs. Bites itch and can spread germs, so use bug spray and long sleeves at dusk.
- Lives in
- Anywhere with standing water: puddles, birdbaths, buckets, swamps and marshes.
- Eats
- Flower nectar, mostly! Only females drink blood, and only to lay eggs.
🔎Curious fact: Florida is home to more than 80 kinds of mosquitoes, and that whining buzz is their wings beating hundreds of times per second.
🦗
Grasshopper
Grasshopper Safe
The spring-loaded jumper of every grassy field. Grasshoppers can launch themselves about 20 times their own body length — like you jumping over a school bus.
- Lives in
- Grassy fields, roadsides, empty lots and backyards across Florida.
- Eats
- Grass and leaves — it's a strict plant-eater.
🔎Curious fact: A grasshopper's ears aren't on its head — they're on its belly!
Beetles are the champions of variety: shiny scarabs, clicking click beetles, giant stag beetles. What makes a beetle a beetle? Hard front wings that close like a shell over the flying wings.
- Lives in
- Everywhere in Florida: woods, gardens, under logs, under leaves, even underground.
- Eats
- Depends on the beetle — plants, old wood, fungus, or other insects.
🔎Curious fact: About one of every four known animal species on Earth is a beetle. Scientists have named over 350,000 kinds so far.
The singer of the Florida summer. That loud buzzing chorus from the trees on hot days? Male cicadas, calling with special drum-like plates on their bodies.
- Lives in
- Trees in neighborhoods, parks and forests all over Florida.
- Eats
- Tree sap, sipped through a straw-like mouth.
🔎Curious fact: Cicadas are among the loudest insects on Earth — some choruses are as loud as a lawn mower. In Florida you hear them every single summer.
Praying Mantis
Mantis Safe
A patient hunter that holds its spiky front legs folded like it's praying. Mantises stay perfectly still, then strike faster than you can blink. Gentle with people — just don't squeeze.
- Lives in
- Gardens, shrubs and tall grass, standing very, very still.
- Eats
- Other insects — grabbed with those lightning-fast front legs.
🔎Curious fact: The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head to look over its "shoulder."
🐜
Carpenter Ant
Ant Be careful
One of Florida's biggest ants. Carpenter ants carve tunnels through soft, damp wood to build their nests — but here's the twist: they never actually eat the wood. Big ones can pinch, so look, don't grab.
- Lives in
- Old logs, stumps and dead branches — and sometimes damp wood in houses.
- Eats
- Sweet things like honeydew, plus other insects. Not wood!
🔎Curious fact: Carpenter ants carve smooth tunnels like real carpenters — and leave little piles of "sawdust" outside the door.
Paper Wasp
Wasp Do not touch
A slim wasp with long legs that builds umbrella-shaped nests under porch roofs and branches. Paper wasps defend their nest with painful stings — admire their paper craft from far away.
- Lives in
- Open paper nests under roof edges, porches, mailboxes and tree branches.
- Eats
- Caterpillars and other insects (to feed babies); adults also sip nectar.
🔎Curious fact: Paper wasps invented paper long before people did — they chew wood fibers into pulp and build their nests with it.
🦗
Eastern Lubber Grasshopper
Grasshopper Be careful
A true Florida celebrity: huge, slow, and dressed in bright yellow, orange and black. Lubbers are too heavy to fly and too slow to run — because they don't need to escape anyone.
- Lives in
- Gardens, roadside ditches and damp weedy spots all across Florida.
- Eats
- Leaves of many, many plants — gardeners are not fans.
🔎Curious fact: Lubbers are toxic to most birds and can hiss and foam to say "back off!" — that's why they don't bother hurrying. The foam can irritate skin, so just watch.
✨
Firefly (Lightning Bug)
Beetle Safe
Not a fly at all — a soft-winged beetle with a built-in lantern. On warm evenings, fireflies blink secret light codes to find each other in the dark.
- Lives in
- Damp meadows, yard edges and woods at dusk, mostly in spring and summer.
- Eats
- Baby fireflies (larvae) hunt snails and worms; many adults barely eat at all.
🔎Curious fact: Firefly light is "cold light" — almost all the energy becomes glow instead of heat. Each species blinks its own secret pattern.
🕷️
Spiders
Arachnid Be careful
Not an insect — but important to know
Count the legs! Insects have 6 legs and 3 body parts; spiders have 8 legs and 2 body parts — they're arachnids. Florida's giant golden silk orb-weavers ("banana spiders") build webs bigger than you. Most spiders are harmless helpers, but never touch a shiny black spider with a red hourglass — that's a black widow.
- Lives in
- Gardens, porches, woods and window corners — anywhere insects fly by.
- Eats
- Insects — including tons of mosquitoes. Thank you, spiders!
🔎Curious fact: Spider silk is, for its weight, stronger than steel — and one spider can make several different kinds of silk.