Bugs
Species
Bug Behavior
In everyday speech, “bug” covers almost any small creature that crawls, flies or jumps: beetles, bees, butterflies, even spiders and centipedes, which are not insects at all. Scientists use the word more narrowly. To an entomologist, a true bug is an insect in the order Hemiptera, a large group with tens of thousands of species, including bed bugs, stink bugs and many water bugs. That sets them apart from other insect orders, such as ants, bees and wasps (Hymenoptera), butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera), beetles (Coleoptera), and flies and mosquitoes (Diptera). So while every true bug is an insect, plenty of insects are not bugs.
How to Tell a True Bug From Other Insects
A few features separate true bugs from the beetles, flies and other insects you find around a Florida home:
- A beak, not jaws. True bugs have a needle-like beak for piercing and sucking, usually tucked under the body when not in use. Beetles and ants have chewing jaws.
- Half-and-half wings. In stink bugs, leaf-footed bugs and their relatives, the front wings are thick and leathery near the body and thin and clear at the tips. Folded, they often form an X on the back. Beetle wing covers are hard all the way and meet in a straight line down the middle.
- No grub or maggot stage. Young bugs, called nymphs, hatch looking like small wingless versions of the adults and grow through several molts.
Most true bugs feed on plant sap, seeds or developing fruit. Some hunt other insects, such as assassin bugs and the wheel bug. A small number, including bed bugs and kissing bugs, feed on blood.
Florida has plenty of them. Southern green stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs feed on tomatoes, beans and citrus, chinch bugs damage St. Augustinegrass lawns, and giant water bugs live in ponds and fly to porch lights at night. Lovebugs, despite the name, are small flies rather than true bugs. True bugs are active year-round in South Florida and through the warm months farther north, with the highest numbers in summer. For what an infestation looks like, see bug infestations.
The Hemiptera order is broader than most people expect. Besides stink bugs and bed bugs, it takes in cicadas, aphids, leafhoppers, whiteflies, mealybugs and scale insects. Like other insects, they have an exoskeleton, a body in three sections and six legs. What they all share is the beak. Inside it are fine, needle-like stylets that form two tiny channels: one pumps saliva into a plant or animal, and the other draws food back up, much like a drinking straw.
Many sap feeders are picky, sticking to one plant or a small group of related plants. Aphids, whiteflies, mealybugs and scales take in so much sap that they excrete the extra as a sugary liquid called honeydew. In Florida yards this is why hedges and citrus leaves turn sticky and then black, as sooty mold grows on the honeydew and ants arrive to collect it.
Not all of them eat plants. Some feed on algae or fungi, and a few, including bed bugs, take blood. Giant water bugs and their relatives hunt underwater, catching tadpoles and small fish.
Bugs Species
Bugs Species
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