The Insects Portal

A western honey bee on a honeycomb created inside of a wooden beehive
A bull ant showing the powerful mandibles and the relatively large compound eyes that provide excellent vision

Insects (from Latin insectum) are hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and a pair of antennae. Insects are the most diverse group of animals, with more than a million described species; they represent more than half of all animal species. (Full article...)

Selected article - show another

T. saccata male specimen on display at the Australian Museum

Thopha saccata, the double drummer, is the largest Australian species of cicada and reputedly the loudest insect in the world. Documented by the Danish zoologist Johan Christian Fabricius in 1803, it was the first described and named cicada native to Australia. Its common name comes from the large dark red-brown sac-like pockets that the adult male has on each side of its abdomen—the "double drums"—that are used to amplify the sound it produces.

Broad-headed compared with other cicadas, the double drummer is mostly brown with a black pattern across the back of its thorax, and has red-brown and black underparts. The sexes are similar in appearance, though the female lacks the male's tymbals and sac-like covers. Found in sclerophyll forest in Queensland and New South Wales, adult double drummers generally perch high in the branches of large eucalypts. They emerge from the ground where they have spent several years as nymphs from November until March, and live for another four to five weeks. They appear in great numbers in some years, yet are absent in others. (Full article...)
List of selected articles

Did you know - load new batch

List articles

Related portals

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various insect-related articles on Wikipedia.

Selected image - show another

{{{caption}}}
{{{caption}}}
Credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim

The yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae), is a mosquito that can spread the dengue fever, Chikungunya and yellow fever viruses, and other diseases. It can be recognized by white markings on legs and a marking in the form of a lyre on the thorax.

Topics

Subcategories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories

By classification

Tasks


Here are some tasks awaiting attention:
  • Article requests : There are thousands of family-level through species-level articles that have yet to be started.
  • Categorization : Figure out what categories to add to each article so that others can find them more easily. Also use the {{WikiProject Insects}} template to classify the status of any articles related to insect taxa.
  • Infobox : Add or update a {{Taxobox}}: Add more information like species authors or create a completely new taxobox for an entomology article that needs one.
  • Photo : Many entomology–related articles would be substantially better with the addition of one or more photographs. Feel free to take your own and upload them, or find ones with the appropriate licenses and upload them here.

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals

Purge server cache