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True bugs are an order of insects that includes 50,000 to 80,000 species of groups such as cicadas, aphids, grasshoppers, leafhoppers and shield insects. Sizes range from 1 mm (0.04 inches) to about 15 cm (6 inches) and share a common arrangement of sucking mouthparts. The name “true bugs” is sometimes limited to the suborder Heteroptera. Many insects commonly known as “bugs” belong to other orders; for example, the lovebug is a fly and the May bug and ladybug are beetles.

Most hemipterans feed on plants, using their sucking and penetrating mouthparts to extract plant sap. Some are parasites while others are predators that feed on other insects or small invertebrates. They live in a large variety of habitats, generally terrestrial, although some species are adapted to life in or on the surface of fresh water. Hemipterans are hemimetables, with young nymphs somehow resembling adults. Many aphids are capable of parthenogenesis, producing young from unfertilized eggs; this helps them to reproduce very quickly under favorable conditions.

Humans have interacted with hemiptera for millennia. Some species, including many aphids, are important agricultural pests, which damage crops with the direct action of sucking the sap, but also damage them indirectly by being the vectors of serious viral diseases. Other species have been used for biological control of insect pests. Hemipterans have been cultivated for the extraction of the coloring cochineal (also known as carmine) and for shellac. The bed bug is a persistent parasite of humans. Cicadas were used as food and appeared in the literature from the Iliad in ancient Greece.

Diversity

Hemiptera is the largest order of hemimetabular insects (not undergoing complete metamorphosis; although some examples such as male-scale insects undergo a complete metamorphosis form) containing over 75,000 named species; insect orders with multiple species all have a pupal stage (i.e. undergo complete metamorphosis or “holometabolism”), beetles (370,000 species described), Lepidoptera (160,000), Diptera (100,000) and Hymenoptera (100,000). The group is very varied. Most of the species are terrestrial, including a number of important agricultural pests, but some are found in freshwater habitats. These include boatmen, skaters and giant insects.

Taxonomy and Phylogeny

Fossil planthopper (Fulgoromorpha) from the first Early Cretaceous Crato Formation of Brazil, c. 116 mya
The fossil record of hemipterans goes back to Carboniferous (Moscovian). The oldest fossils are from the Lower Permian Archescytinidae and are thought to be basal in the Auchenorrhyncha.

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