Category Insects, Arachnids, and Bugs

What is the difference between the Large White Butterfly and the Small White Butterfly?

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What is the difference between the Large White Butterfly (Pieris brassicae) and the Small White Butterfly (Pieris rapae)? 

Both the Large White Butterfly and the Small White Butterfly are white insects in the Pieridae family of white and yellow butterflies.

The Large White Butterfly is about 5-7 centimetres (2-3 inches) across its wings, whereas the Small White Butterfly is about 3-5 centimetres (1-2 inches) across its wings. 

The Large White Butterfly has a black band at the tip of its forewings (front wings), whereas the Small White Butterfly has no black bands.

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Large White Butterfly

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The Large White Butterfly (Pieris brassicae) is a small insect in the Pieridae family of white and yellow butterflies. It is also known as the Large Cabbage White. It is a close relative of the Small White Butterfly (Pieris rapae). 

The Large White Butterfly is white with black tips on its forewings (front wings). The female has two black spots in the middle of its forewings. The male has no black dots. Its upperside is creamy-white, and its underside is pale-greenish. Its body is black.

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Small White Butterfly

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The Small White Butterfly (Pieris rapae rapae) is a small insect in the Pieridae family of white and yellow butterflies. It is also known as the Small Cabbage White. 

The Small White Butterfly has a white upperside—the male is creamy-white and the female is brighter white. Both the male and the female have two black spots in the middle of its forewings (front wings). Its underside is yellowish with black speckles. 

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Yellowjacket Hoverfly

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The Yellowjacket Hoverfly (Milesia virginieusis) is an insect in the Syrphidae family of hoverflies. It is also known as the Virginia Flower Fly or the Syrphid Fly. It is a syrphid. It is also a pollinator. It is related to the Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax).

The Yellowjacket Hoverfly looks like a hornet, bee, or wasp, but it does not have a stinger on its tail. It is harmless. It is bright, glossy yellow with dark bands on its abdomen. It has six short yellowish legs. It has very large, black compound eyes. It has one pair of translucent (clear, see-through) wings with dark veins. 

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Striped Bug

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The Striped Bug (Graphosoma lineatum) is a small insect in the Pentatomidae family of shield bugs. It is also known as the Minstrel Bug or the Striped Stink Bug.

The Striped Bug has a roundish body with a large shield on its back, called a scutellum. Its upperbody is orangish, with wide, black, longitudinal stripes. Its pronotum (plate-like structure that covers the thorax) has six black bands. It has forewings (front wings) called hemelytra, and it also has hindwings (back wings). It has a sucking mouthpart.  Its antennae are black with five segments. It has six reddish-orange legs.

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Domestic House Spider

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The Domestic House Spider (Tegenaria domestica) is a common small non-venomous arachnid in the Agelenidae family of funnel-web spiders. It is also known as the Barn Funnel Weaver.

The Domestic House Spider has an elongated orange-brownish or grey body with a flattened thorax and straight abdomen. It has eight long legs, with bands of light and dark brown. It has two black, longitudinal stripes on its thorax. Its abdomen is mottled brown, beige, and grey with a pattern of chevron stripes. It has two short protrubences near its mouth, called pedipalps. 

It has eight eyes. Six of its eyes face forward. It is photo-sensitive, which means that it is sensitive to light. It prefers dark locations.

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Migratory Locust

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The Migratory Locust (Locusta migratoria) is an insect in the Acrididae family of short-horned grasshoppers.

The Migratory Locust varies in colour from black to brownish to yellowish and green, depending on the colour of the vegetation. Generally, it has a blackish-brown back and light-brown belly and face. It has short antennae. It has long wings and long legs.

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Italian Honeybee

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The Italian Honeybee (Apis mellifera ligustica) is a small insect. It is also known as the Italian Bee or the Ligurian Bee. It is a sub-species of the European Honeybee (Apis mellifera), which is also called the Western Honeybee. It is a pollinator because it collects pollen from flowers.

The Italian Honeybee has a head, thorax (chest), and abdomen with a stinger. It has a brown abdomen with yellow bands. Its wings are transparent. It has six legs, and large eyes.

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Common Wasp

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The Common Wasp (Vespula vulgaris) is an insect. It is also known as the European Wasp or the Common Yellow-Jacket. It is a vespid. 

The Common Wasp has a black and yellow banded body with black dots and markings on its abdomen. It has yellow legs. Worker wasps have a stinger at the end of their tail. It can sting multiple times because the stinger stays in the body (the stinger of bees comes out of the body when the bee stings an animal, so it can only sting once). It has large black eyes and black antennae.

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Instar

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What is an instar?

An instar is the development stage of an insect between each stage of moulting, or shedding its skin. 

For example, each stage from egg to larvae (grub) to pupa (chrysalis or cocoon) to an adult insect, as an insect undergoes metamorphosis, is called an instar.

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Monarch Butterfly

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The Monarch Butterfly (Danus plexippus) is an insect in the Nymphalidae family of milkweed butterfies. It is also known as the Milkweed Butterfly, Common Tiger Butterfly, Wanderer Butterfly, and the Black-Veined Brown Butterfly. 

The Monarch Butterfly has black, orange, and white wings. The undersides of its wings are orange-brown. It has black veins and small white spots in the margins at the edge of its wings. The male has a black spot on each hind (back) wing. Its body and its six legs are black. 

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Two-Spotted Ladybird Beetle

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The Two-Spotted Ladybird (Adalia bipunctata) is a small insect in the Coccinellidae family of ladybird beetles. It is also known as the Two Spotted Lady Beetle.

The Two-Spotted Ladybird Beetle can have a red or a yellow body with two black spots on its elytra (two wing cases). Its body is oval-shaped and slightly domed. Its wings are hidden underneath the wing cases. It has black compound eyes. Its antennae are light-brown, quite long, and slightly thickened at the ends. Its neck shield usually covers the head and has white spots. It has little black legs. 

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Giant Round-Backed Millipede

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The Giant Round-Backed Millipede (Pachybolus) is in the Spirobolida Order and Pachybolidae family of round-backed millipedes. It is not an insect, nor an arachnid. It is a diplopod. 

The Giant Round-Backed Millipede has a thick, elongated, cylindrical, segmented body with a hard exo-skeleton. It can be brown-black, red or yellow. Although millipede means a thousand legs, it actually has about 200 legs. It has two pairs of legs per body segment. It has a short head with a number of simple eyes called ocelli – and poor eyesight. It has short antennae.

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Emperor Scorpion

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The Emperor Scorpion (Pandinus imperator) is an arachnid, related to the spider. It has eight legs.

The Emperor Scorpion has a thick, black body with a segmented exo-skeleton. The exo-skeleton is called the ecdysis, and it glows blue in ultraviolet light. It has large pincers, called pedipalps, and a tail that curves over its body. At the end of its tail is a stinger, called a telson, that is mildy venomous. 

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Large Banded Grasshopper

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The Large Banded Grasshopper (Arcyptera fusca) is a medium-sized invertebrate insect in the Acrididae family of short horned grasshoppers. 

The Large Banded Grasshopper is a yellow-green or brownish-green colour with dark markings. It has long, strong hind (back) legs that enable it to jump long distances. Its hind legs are red, with black and white banded knees. The male has wings and can fly, whereas the female has only basic wings and cannot fly. 

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Asiatic Rhinoceros Beetle

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The Asiatic Rhinoceros Beetle (Oryctes rhinoceros) is a small insect in the Scarabaeidae family of scarab beetles. It is also known as the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle or the Coconut Palm Rhinoceros Beetle.

The Asiatic Rhinoceros Beetle is glossy black with a blue-green sheen, and a large horn, like the horn of a rhinoceros. It has black wing cases, called elytra. Each wing case (elytron) is covered with white wax and a number of small nodules or lumps. Its antennae are short. It has spikey hairs on its six legs.

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