List of Missouri Insects

Silently and inconspicuously, insects perform important jobs in gardens. People tend to notice problem insects because they affect the harvest or enjoyment of ornamental plants, but other insects are unsung heroes. Observe insects as you work in the garden so you can identify beneficial insects and avoid destroying them accidentally. Even a small garden can host a large number and variety of insects. Missouri offers many kinds of insect habitats with its varied topography that includes forests, grasslands, streams, lakes and the Ozark Mountains.

A number of adult and immature insects patrol a garden, looking for prey. Attacking aphids are larvae of lacewings, flower flies and ladybug beetles. Agile aerial hunters, dragonflies catch many kinds of insects on the wing. Stout-bodied, hairy robber flies dart from the cover of foliage, capture insects and return to shelter to suck them dry. Predaceous ground beetles in the family Carabidae work at night, consuming caterpillars, fly larvae, grubs, aphids, slugs and snails. Lurking on plants and their flowers, assassin bugs and wheel bugs dart out to capture prey with their grasping front legs, inject digestive saliva and suck the contents from their victims' bodies. Praying mantis also catch insects with their large front legs, but they use sharp mouth parts to tear apart the captured insects. Paper-making wasps benefit a garden, with the adults capturing many caterpillars and grubs to feed their young.

Insects that feed on plants form the bottom layer of the food chain, and they are eaten by many other kinds of animals. These insects include caterpillars, grasshoppers, katydids and beetles such as cucumber beetles, leaf beetles and chafers; they use their sharp mandibles to chew leaves. Other plant feeders suck plant sap by using piercing and sucking mouth parts. These insects include aphids, plant bugs, stink bugs, cicadas, whiteflies, mealybugs and scale insects. Some insects burrow in plant tissue, and they include leaf miners and the larvae of beetles such as long-horned beetles, metallic wood-boring beetles and ambrosia beetles. Hidden underground are root feeders such as beetle grubs and cicada nymphs.

Showy, colorful, simple-to-observe garden insects such as butterflies and moths pollinate flowers. They visit flowers for nectar and transfer pollen from plant to plant, and they seek food plants for their descendants' caterpillar stage of development. Bees are of primary importance in pollinating fruit crops and in setting seeds for many kinds of plants. They include not just the introduced honeybee but many kinds of native bees, such as bumblebees, digger bees, leaf-cutter bees, sweat bees and carpenter bees. Other useful pollinators are flower flies, soldier beetles and flower beetles.

Another basic job insects perform is recycling dead and decomposing organic material. A number of fly larvae inhabit dead animals; those larvae include bluebottle and greenbottle fly maggots and beetle larvae such as those of carrion beetles. Insects that live in decomposing plant tissues include immature forms of rove beetles, termites, craneflies and soldier flies. Adult and young cockroaches, crickets and springtails eat dead plant materials. Usually hidden from sight, these insects typically have to be looked for to be seen. Their activities are vital to recycling essential nutrients.