Every person, sooner or later, comes upon a crazy weird insect and wonders what it could possibly be. The question now is: how do you go about finding out?
If you love books and other printed materials, you might find yourself headed to the library or the local book store for a good field guide on insects. But, then what? There is no fast way to learn all the things you need to know so that you can use what the experts use: dichotomous keys (and often a microscope). So that you do not have to look it up, a dichotomous key poses a question about a specific character. That question has only two possible answers (yes or no) and either ends in your answer, or branches to another question. These questions continue until you work your way through all the questions that are relevant and you have your insect identified. Using keys to get your answer can be a grueling process.
To spare their readers, beginners' guides to insects do not use keys and usually display only common species, with up to a few hundred images or photographs. That is not to say that these resources are not good. In fact, many of them are extraordinarily useful and should also be admired for their artwork and photographs. Considerable skills are required to render publishable-quality illustrations and photographs of these wonderful and minute creatures. However, if you do not know a cockroach from a butterfly, you could get lost thumbing through the pages and may give up.
If you are not the book aficionado, you might head straight to the all-powerful internet. Yes, books and web pages are a powerful things. But, as of this writing (July 2010), there are an estimated 35 million websites about insects. That means that websites about insects outnumber insect species by about 35 to one. Sadly, despite the myriad pages about insects, not every insect species has a web page devoted to its identification. Until then, you will probably find yourself browsing through endless pages trying to find some article or picture, for example, about a "weird green and red bug with long feelers". Unless you have great skill at performing web-based searches for insect identification, you are in for a formidable challenge.
Without adding any more examples of what could waste your time trying to identify your bug, the easiest way to get your answer is to ask somebody else who knows an awful lot about insects. Now, if you do not actually have the bug, or at least a photograph of the bug, asking an expert about this "weird green and red bug with long feelers" is likely to give both of you a headache.
The expert will be thinking: Hmm...It is not a roach because there are no roaches around here that look like that so it is probably a beetle of some sort. The inside joke here is that beetle species outnumber all other animal species (not just insects) about 3 to 1. If you just guessed it was a beetle, then you would have a good chance of actually being right. Next, the expert thinks: how many of the thousands of insects I have memorized are green and red and have long antennae? Then, inside their head they start thinking like their dichotomous keys: Was it a beetle or something else? If it was a beetle, then I have three or four guesses. Was it longer than it was wide? Did the "feelers" look this way or that way? These go on inside their head until they come back at you with some odd questions like: "Can you describe the feelers?" "Were they bent?" "Did you happen to see if it had small bulbs on the end of its feet?" You might answer "No, but it ran really fast!" You may be getting the idea that this method is going to be just as tedious and unlikely to get you the answer you are looking for. But, there is hope.
Provided you have a photograph of your new weird bug, or the insect itself, a knowledgeable insect enthusiast should be able to examine it and quickly narrow down the identity of your insect to at least a scientific group called a family. Species-level identifications are often very difficult, even for the highly trained experts. So, what if you do not actually know any insect enthusiasts?
Fortunately, the US government provides private citizens help through the Systematic Entomology Laboratory at the USDA. However, you will have to prepare the specimen in a particular manner and you will actually need to send them the bug. You may also be able to get help from Cooperative Extension System Offices that are located in each state, typically at an agricultural university.
Faster and easier ways are to use the internet to e-mail or upload a photo of your weird bug to an expert that can identify it quickly. Some of the best experts are volunteers that have no formal training as entomologists, but what they do happen to have is extraordinary enthusiasm for their six-legged friends and a generous willingness to help others. A quick internet search for "Free Insect Identification Help" will return a list of some very good websites for insect identification.
So, the next time you find, for example, a "weird green and red bug with long feelers", take a picture and send it off for free identification help. You may be pleasantly surprised how quickly and easily a volunteer can give you the answer you are looking for!
About this Author
In addition to publishing numerous scientific articles on insects, the author has contributed to and recommends the following two websites for free help with insect identifications:
InsectAsylum, and BugGuide.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dean_Rider
