How to Identify Beetles in Ontario

Choose a natural or wild area near you where the taking of insects is legal. Most likely this would be on an operating farm, private land or your own backyard.

Search the various micro-environments where beetles are known to flourish. These areas include beneath the bark of trees, underneath stones, on flowers or leaves, in soil around carcasses and in cow dung. Take along a small insect-collecting net (also called a butterfly net) and use that to obtain various live insect specimens.

Sweep your net through the chosen collecting area and examine the contents of your bag.

Place a thin layer of sawdust on the bottom of the specimen jar.

Identify any beetles and place them in the killing jar.

Put a few drops of either ethyl acetate or amyl acetate into the layer of sawdust and close the jar for a few minutes.

Remove the dead beetles and examine them with a magnifying glass. Beetles can be correctly identified because they have two pairs of wings with the forward pair usually consisting of a hard covering to the body, which unhinges during flight. Most, but not all, beetles are capable of flight.

Identify the genus and species of beetle through closer study of the physical characteristics of each insect. The difficulty of this last stage of identification will vary widely depending on which beetle you are looking at. Certain members of the order Coleoptera will be relatively easy, while others might require a professional entomologist and a microscopic examination. A dichotomous key and a book on insects are great aids in this task. Some of the more easily identifiable species include the Twelve spotted Tiger Beetle (Cicindela duodecimguttata), the Long horned beetle (Stictoleptura canadensis), the Swamp milkweed leaf beetle (Labidomera trimaculata), the Big Dipper Firefly (Photinus pryalis), and the Tiger beetle (Cicindela formosa). Many introduced species can also be found, such as the ladybug, Japanese beetle and Emerald ash borer.