This. I wouldn't say very common though, they're actually extremely rare in most of Northern Europe, and difficult to find. They're much more common in hotter countries like Egypt than they are in Europe.
This. You've obviously gone to a lot of effort and your collections look fantastic, but without labels they're no use scientifically. What's going to happen when you need to get rid of them (through getting bored of them, death, etc)? Much better to bequest them to a museum than to chuck them...
1, 3 and 5 are all different lacewing larvae. As a form of camouflage they cover the spines on their bodies with the exoskeletons of things they've eaten, kind of similar to caddis fly larvae.
2 is a predatory beetle larva, maybe a rove beetle, and 4 is a ladybird larva.
Edit: Actually, 5 is...
That one doesn't look like your grub judging by the photos. If this was Europe I'd say it was a stag beetle or may bug (cockchafer), not sure about America though.
I saw a life-size model (fairly realistic) of the largest spider fossil ever found in the Museum of Zoology in Cambridge a couple of months ago, it was huge!
Here's the only picture of it I could find
I had a European one (Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa) land next to me on a boat in Egypt. Seeing as they're extremely rare in Britain, I was very excited, although it turns out they're common in Egypt. It was a lovely thing anyway, very interesting insects.
I think the final butterfly is a bird-wing. The dragonflies are mainly darters & skimmers, I think the one with a black tail is a black-tailed skimmer.
I'm going to Botswana and Namibia in July/August 2012, any suggestions as to what I should be looking out for & where I should be going with regard to inverts?
Tipulid species (cranefly), could be Tipula maxima. Crane-flies are amongst very few flies where you can see the halteres distinctly, they're the little clubbed sticks beneath the wings. These are unique to Diptera (true flies), and are what the second pair of wings evolved into. Interestingly...
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