Forget the rain forest—your home is brimming with bugs. More than 500 kinds of them. 

Spiders, flies, beetles, ants, and book lice are among the critters detected in a new study, the first to evaluate arthropod diversity in U.S. homes.  

Arthropods—a huge group that includes insects, spiders, and their relatives—have been living and evolving alongside people for millennia. (See "Why Did Thousands of Venomous Spiders Swarm a House?") 

“Nobody had done a comprehensive inventory like this before, and we found far more diversity than most people would expect," says study leader Matt Bertone, an entomologist at North Carolina State University.