Invertebrates of the National Parks
Meet the 15 invertebrates we've written up, like the Army cutworm moth, and the national parks where you'll find them.
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Invertebrate Army cutworm moth
Euxoa auxiliaris
A gray moth that migrates from Great Plains farm fields to high mountain talus, where grizzly bears flip rocks to eat it by the thousands each summer.
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Invertebrate Banana slug
Ariolimax columbianus
A long yellow slug, sometimes as big as a real banana, that glides across the damp floor of the redwood forest and cleans up what falls there.
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Invertebrate California mussel
Mytilus californianus
The big blue-black mussel that packs Pacific rocks by the thousands, anchored by threads so strong they inspired medical glue.
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Invertebrate Desert tarantula
Aphonopelma chalcodes
A large, gentle desert spider with a pale, hairy body that spends its days in a silk-lined burrow and comes out on fall evenings to look for a mate.
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Invertebrate Giant desert hairy scorpion
Hadrurus arizonensis
The largest scorpion in North America, a sandy-colored desert digger covered in sensing hairs that glows blue-green under ultraviolet light.
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Invertebrate Giant green anemone
Anthopleura xanthogrammica
A bright green tide-pool anemone that farms algae inside its own body for the color and eats crabs whole with a ring of stinging tentacles.
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Invertebrate Great Sand Dunes tiger beetle
Cicindela theatina
A beetle found nowhere else on Earth but the Great Sand Dunes, hunting ants and mites across the open sand in a coat with a violin-shaped pattern.
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Invertebrate Monarch butterfly
Danaus plexippus
The orange-and-black butterfly whose fall generation flies thousands of miles to the same winter trees, feeding only on milkweed as a caterpillar.
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Invertebrate Mountain pine beetle
Dendroctonus ponderosae
A beetle about the size of a grain of rice that tunnels under pine bark and can turn a mountainside red at Yellowstone, Glacier, and Rocky Mountain.
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Invertebrate Ochre sea star
Pisaster ochraceus
The purple or orange five-armed star of Pacific tide pools whose appetite for mussels decides what everything else on the rock gets to be.
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Invertebrate Pandora moth
Coloradia pandora
A large gray forest moth of ponderosa country whose caterpillars boom every few decades and once fed the Klamath and Paiute people who harvested them.
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Invertebrate Synchronous firefly
Photinus carolinus
A woodland beetle of the southern Appalachians whose males flash together in waves on June nights, one of the few in North America that blink in unison.
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Invertebrate Tarantula hawk
Pepsis
A big black desert wasp with orange wings that hunts tarantulas, delivers one of the most painful stings on Earth, and almost never bothers people.
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Invertebrate Western tiger swallowtail
Papilio rutulus
The big yellow-and-black butterfly of western streamsides whose caterpillar wears fake snake eyes and flips out a stinky orange horn when scared.
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Invertebrate Yellowstone brine fly
Ephydra bruesi
A small fly that lives in Yellowstone's hot runoff channels, walking on water close to the boiling point that would kill almost anything else.