Overview

Current knowledge is insufficient to say exactly how many of the world's one million or so species of insects are found in the UAE. A provisional and probably conservative estimate for the number of UAE insect species is between 5,000 and 10,000. The majority are beetles, true flies, ants, wasps and bees, but butterflies and moths, grasshoppers, crickets, bugs, neuropterans, cockroaches and preying mantises also contribute numbers of species, with the smaller orders making up the rest. It should, however, be emphasised that this is a crude estimate and unlikely to be substantiated in the near future by a complete listing of UAE species.