Getting a Pest Problem Identified

Need a pest identified?  If your problem is insect-related, you have several options.  You can take a specimen to your county Extension office and ask for assistance from a Master Gardener, Horticulture agent or County Extension Agent.   In most cases, your agent representative will be able to help you.  For more difficult identifications, you may have to prepare the specimen and send it through the mail for identification.  It is very important for an accurate identification to provide detailed information about your collection.  By printing out the attached form and enclosing it with your specimen, we will provide our best identification.

If you have a high quality digital image of the pest you may be able to submit your sample to the county extension office electronically. It is important to remember that the same information requested for actual samples must be included with your digital samples. In fact, collection information is even more important with digital images, since there is an additional layer of interpretation that must be made by an identifier using a digital sample. The minimal information that should accompany your image is city, county and state of collection, date of collection, measured length of specimen (since scale is often not identifiable with an image), abundance and the type of damage being caused. Relative abundance or degree of infestation is also important to note. Failure to supply the needed information may mean that we will not process your submission.

We currently do not charge for insect identifications.  Because of the limited number of personnel that are available to provide this free service, however, we can not always guarantee a rapid turnaround of submitted samples.  We do promise to provide an accurate identification as quickly as we can.  Should you need a guaranteed fast turnaround, commercial fees for insect identifications usually start at around $100 per insect through private firms.

If your problem is due to non-insect causes, such as soil deficiencies, disease, environmental issues, or herbicide damage, you will need to contact another agency.  Plant disease and cultural problems are handled by the Plant Pathology and Microbiology Diagnostic Lab.  For soil testing, you should contact the Soil Water and Forage Testing Laboratory.  Both of these laboratories charge fees for analyzing samples.

Please take the time to read the instructions on proper preparation and shipment of specimens.  Improperly prepared specimens, or samples with incomplete collection information will be returned without an identification.

Click here for an insect identification form.

Forms, with properly prepared specimens, can be brought to your county Extension office or mailed to:

Extension Entomologist
Department of Entomology
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX  77843-2475. 

For clients in the north Texas/Dallas area only, specimens may be mailed to Extension Urban Entomologist, Texas A&M University Research and Extension Center, 17360 Coit Road, Dallas, TX  75252-6599.

Revised: June 11, 2004