A Comprehensive Guide to Common Insects Found in Decatur & Nearby Communities
This guide offers must-know details about local insects that can negatively impact the health, beauty, and longevity of your lawn, trees, shrubs, and landscaping features, as well as your home or commercial building. The sooner you can put a name to a pest, the sooner you can take action. When you’re ready to safeguard your property, contact Superior Services, the hometown team that Decatur and nearby communities have turned to since 1996.
Insects to Watch for in the Decatur Area
Subterranean Termites
These are the most destructive insects throughout Northern Alabama. There are several “castes” of termites, including workers, reproductives, and soldiers.
Workers are pale, almost translucent, and about the size of a grain of rice. You’re not likely to see them, as they generally don’t venture out into the open. They travel through mud tubes built along foundations and feed on wood from the inside out. If left unchecked, they can cause thousands of dollars in damage in a short period.
Reproductive termites, often called “swarmers,” are dark brown and emerge in spring to establish new termite colonies. People frequently mistake them for flying ants. Should you see swarmers, you have clear evidence that termites have invaded your property.
Soldier termites share the same creamy white coloring as workers but are easy to tell apart by their oversized, rectangular, and amber-colored heads and prominent mandibles. This caste only makes up a small percentage of termite colonies.
Mosquitoes
These pesky insects need no introduction. Anyone along the Tennessee River corridor knows that mosquitoes are an unfortunate warm-weather staple. Slender and dark-bodied with long, spindly legs, they breed in any standing water. Female mosquitoes are the ones that bite, leaving behind itchy welts. At worst, they can even transmit viruses and pathogens.
Yellow Jackets
Roughly the size of a large paperclip, these aggressive, ground-nesting wasps are identifiable by their bold black-and-yellow banding. Yellow jackets build papery nests underground or inside wall voids, so you may encounter them throughout your yard or even inside your building. Unlike bees, they can sting repeatedly and become especially defensive in late summer when colonies peak in size.
Paper Wasps
These are slender, long-legged wasps in shades of reddish-brown and yellow. They build open, umbrella-shaped nests from chewed wood fiber. You’ll often find their nests under eaves, porch ceilings, and fence rails. While they’re less aggressive than yellow jackets, paper wasps are still capable of painful, repeated stings.
Carpenter Bees
Although they look similar to bumble bees, you can distinguish carpenter bees by looking for their shiny, hairless abdomen. These insects also bore perfectly round holes into unfinished or weathered wood to lay their eggs; decks, fascia boards, and pergolas are their common targets. While males will hover and bluff at stinging, females will actually deliver a sting when threatened.
Fire Ants
Small but mighty, this ant species forms large, dome-shaped mounds in open, sunny areas. They’re reddish-brown, as the name would suggest, and generally the size of a sesame seed. Fire ants can swarm aggressively, delivering painful stings that can cause allergic reactions.
Chinch Bugs
Chinch Bugs can devastate a lawn. Black, no bigger than a watermelon seed, and with white wings folded across their backs, they feed on grass by sucking out plant fluids and injecting a toxin. If you don’t see chinch bugs themselves, you may notice their destruction: irregular dead patches that slowly expand and won’t recover, even with regular watering.
Armyworms
These are the caterpillar stage of a moth, striped in green, brown, and black with a distinctive inverted Y on their heads. They move in large numbers and can strip a lawn of green foliage in just a few days, particularly in late summer.
Sod Webworms
Adult sod webworms aren’t a threat to your turf. However, their larvae are. These insects are pale, spotted caterpillars that chew grass blades down to the thatch level. Telltale signs of sod webworm larvae damage are irregular brown patches and closely clipped-looking turf.
Aphids
These pests cluster on the soft new growth of shrubs and ornamental trees, appearing as tiny, pear-shaped insects in green, yellow, or black. They feed in large colonies, weakening plants and secreting a sticky substance called honeydew that encourages mold growth.
Scale Insects
Do you see small, waxy bumps on the stems and leaves of your ornamental shrubs and trees? These may not be just strange growths. They could be scale insects, which can slowly drain plant sap, cause yellowing, stunt growth, and cause dieback.
Whiteflies
Whiteflies are tiny, moth-like insects that cloud up in a white swarm when a plant is disturbed. They feed on the undersides of leaves and thrive on ornamental plants and shrubs, causing yellowing and weakening of the host plant.
Spider Mites
These are nearly invisible to the naked eye but leave behind fine webbing on plant foliage. They thrive in hot, dry conditions and can cause significant discoloration and decline in trees and shrubs before most property owners notice them.
Bagworms
A sure sign of bagworms is a distinctive, spindle-shaped “bag” hanging from the branches of evergreen trees and shrubs. The caterpillars inside feed on foliage and, in heavy infestations, can completely defoliate arborvitae, juniper, and cedar.
Japanese Beetles
These are stocky, metallic green-and-copper beetles about the size of a blueberry. Adults skeletonize the leaves of ornamental trees and shrubs in summer. Not only that, but their larvae (white grubs) live underground and feed on grass roots, causing turf to pull up like a loose carpet.
Worried About Insects on Your Property? Get Peace of Mind with Superior Services.
If you've spotted any of these pests or others on your property, don't wait for the problem to grow. Turn to Superior Services. When we show up, bugs go. It’s really that simple. Reach out today for quality workmanship and the kind of personalized customer care you can only get from a company that’s invested in its community.
From pest control and lawn care to irrigation, we have the tools and expertise to protect what you've worked hard to build. Reach out online or call (256) 795-3368 today. We’d love to help you.
At Superior Services, your satisfaction is our priority! See for yourself what our customers have to say about working with us.
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I have beeen using Superior Services for the last three years to treat for mosquitos. We live on a large lot with a lot of plants, bushes & trees. We got tired of fighting mosquitos and called Superior Services. Our mosquito problem is a thing of the p
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