Identification, Images, & Information
For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
For the United States & Canada

Clickable Guide

Interactive image map to choose major taxa Moths Butterflies Flies Caterpillars Flies Dragonflies Flies Mantids Cockroaches Bees and Wasps Walkingsticks Earwigs Ants Termites Hoppers and Kin Hoppers and Kin Beetles True Bugs Fleas Grasshoppers and Kin Ticks Spiders Scorpions Centipedes Millipedes

Calendar

Upcoming Events

National Moth Week was July 19-27, and the Summer 2025 gathering in Louisiana, July 19-27

Photos of insects and people from the 2024 BugGuide gathering in Idaho July 24-27

Moth submissions from National Moth Week 2024

Photos of insects and people from the 2022 BugGuide gathering in New Mexico, July 20-24

Photos of insects and people from the Spring 2021 gathering in Louisiana, April 28-May 2

Photos of insects and people from the 2019 gathering in Louisiana, July 25-27


Subfamily Nabinae

Representative Images

Damsel Bug - Nabis subcoleoptratus Unknown Bug - Nabis Teneral Nabis? - Nabis unknown bug - Nabis rufusculus Damsel Bug - Metatropiphorus belfragii Reduviidae ? - Hoplistoscelis pallescens Pale Damsel Bug - Nabis Damsel or Assassin? Very camouflaged on drift wood - Nabis roseipennis

Classification

Kingdom Animalia (Animals)
Phylum Arthropoda (Arthropods)
Subphylum Hexapoda (Hexapods)
Class Insecta (Insects)
Order Hemiptera (True Bugs, Cicadas, Hoppers, Aphids and Allies)
Suborder Heteroptera (True Bugs)
Infraorder Cimicomorpha
Family Nabidae (Damsel Bugs)
Subfamily Nabinae

Synonyms and other taxonomic changes

several taxa traditionally treated as separate genera (e.g. in(1)(2)(3)) have been recently demoted back to subgenera of Nabis(4)

Numbers

31 spp. in 6 genera of 2 tribes in our area: Carthasis (a single rare sp., NY-FL-MS) in the Carthasini, the rest in the Nabini(4)

Works Cited

1.How to Know the True Bugs
Slater, James A., and Baranowski, Richard M. 1978. Wm. C. Brown Company.
2.Catalog of the Heteroptera, or True Bugs of Canada and the Continental United States
Thomas J. Henry, Richard C. Froeschner. 1988. Brill Academic Publishers.
3.American Insects: A Handbook of the Insects of America North of Mexico
Ross H. Arnett. 2000. CRC Press.
4.Three new species, notes and new records of poorly known species, and an updated checklist for the North American Nabidae...
Kerzhner I.M., Henry T.J. 2008. Proc. Ent Soc. Wash. 110: 988–1011.