What is the largest and the smallest insect in the world?
The smallest insects are fairy flies, which are insects that parasitize other insects’ eggs by laying their eggs inside them. Fairy flies are only 1/5 of a millimeter in length. Many beetles are less than one millimetre in length, and the North American Feather-winged Beetle Nanosella fungi, at 0.25mm, is a serious contender for the title of smallest insect in the world. Other insect orders which contain extremely small members are the Diptera (True Flies) and the Collembola (Springtails). The “feather-winged” beetles and the “battledore-wing fairy flies” are smaller than some species of protozoa (single cell creatures). Megaphragma caribea a hymenopteran parasite from Guadeloupe, measuring out at a huge 0.17 mm long is in contention for the smallest insect.
