Customer Reviews

Dragonfly Genera of the New World: An Illustrated and Annotated Key to the Anisoptera

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am a professional entomologist and dragonfly enthusaist and bought this book after I got an advertisement for it in the mail. I love this book! While there are other books on North American dragonflies (such as Needham, Westfall, and May's Dragonflies of North America) that help identify North American specimens to species, there hasn't ever been a book that allows Central and South American dragonfly lovers and scientists to do the same. This book goes a long way toward filling the gap with keys to all of the genera of the New World dragonflies. It is filled with great drawings illustrating the key structural characteristics listed in the keys and contains several full color photographic images. It is organized well and beautifully laid out. I believe this book will prove invaluable to scientists studying Central and South American dragonflies. It is a great contribution to the odonate literature - the authors should be proud of themselves for creating such a masterpiece.

This is a comprehensive and extremely well done reference and all serious amateur and all professional odonatologists should have it at their fingertips. The illustrations are prolific, beautifully rendered, and superbly labeled.

The keys are especially excellent, and while the couplets are written in scientific terminology, all that terminology is illustrated WITH EACH COUPLET so that one does not have to flip back and forth between keys and distantly located illustrations as happens with most keys - a wonderful aid!

Looking into the future, the range maps in this text - especially for the neotropical species - represent current limited knowledge of their ranges. Thus, this reference will serve as a historical reference to be expanded as field workers refine the species' occurrences.