Members of the Class Insecta are grouped within the Hexapoda in the phylum of the animal kingdom that contains the most species -- the Arthropoda. Members of this phylum are called arthropods (from the Greek arthros=jointed, poda=foot). Arthropod species comprise over 80% of all known animals. The class Insecta, alone, makes up more than 75% of the arthropod species. There are more known insect species than any other group of living organisms. It is estimated that there are over 1 million named insect species. New species are discovered and are being named continually; it is estimated that there may be between 2 and 10 million insect species on the planet earth.

Given this huge number of insect species, there must be certain standardized rules followed when naming them. Each species is given a Latin, scientific name, which is used throughout the world to refer to this species. The scientific name of an organism consists of two parts: the genus name and the species name. This system of naming insects and all other organisms is called the binomial system of classification; binomial means "two names." In a scientific name, the genus is first and is capitalized. The species name follows the genus and is not capitalized. Both of these names are underlined or printed in italics. Sometimes following the species name is the author's name -- the person who originally described the species. For example, the scientific name for the common house fly is: