Description
Book SynopsisIn much of North America, crickets and katydids provide the soundtrack to summer nights, and grasshoppers frequent the fields and roadsides of midsummer days. Although insects from this group have long been the bane of those who make their living from...
Trade ReviewOften heard, seldom seen, katydids and crickets and their calls epitomize summertime. Also familiar are grasshoppers, flashing their often colorful hind wings in sudden flight. Yet most lay people know little about these abundant insects or how to identify them. Most existing publications are regional or technical; authored by Capinera and Thomas J. Walker, two University of Florida entomologists, and Ralph D. Scott, a Montana-based biologist and scientific illustrator, this first field guide to U.S. and Canadian orthoptera introduces 206 of the most common species (more than a third of the total), each with an excellent color painting by Scott. It explains classification, morphology (illustrated), biology, sound production, and collection and preservation, and presents pictorial keys to families and subfamilies. Species accounts include common name, scientific name, distribution, map, description, ecology, and similar species comparisons. By connecting us to the natural world, field guides play a crucial role in the environmental movement. This splendid guide fills a gap in that effort and is recommended to amateurs and professionals alike. (Starred Review)
* Library Journal *
To study any living creature usefully, one must be able to identify it. Moreover, to the amateur naturalist, the ability to recognize and identify is an important part of the pleasure of observing the living world. John L. Capinera, Ralph D. Scott, and Thomas J. Walker have here produced a first-class example of a field guide, worthy of a place on the shelf of any North American naturalist.
-- Andrew Harvey * Times Literary Supplement *
