Customer Reviews

National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders (National Audubon Society Field Guides)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Audubon Society has put together a helpful field guide to the insects and spiders of North America. The book contains just over 700 photographs of insects and spiders in the front section of the book divided into 22 more or less taxonomic divisions. There is section of descriptive information nearly 600 pages long in the back of the book. The format of the book is such that it can fit into a back pocket or jacket pocket without a lot of bother.

The reference material is helpful in identifying insects/spiders, but I have one significant criticism about the book...why in the world didn't the editors include the scientific names along with the common names of these animals by the photographs in the front section? If one wants to use this book as an aid in scientific identification it becomes an exercise in page flipping -- though those engaged in serious taxonomic identification will doubtless use taxonomic keys for that purpose. Still, for the advanced amateur collector, the page flipping can get annoying.

The photographs are of generally good quality, though no photograph is the equal of a quality illustration.

While 700 photos sounds like a lot, that number is nowhere near the number of photographs it would take to do a comprehensive field guide to insects and spiders of North America. Still, this guide provides good introduction to the diversity of North American insects and spiders. This book will get you in the ballpark when you try to identifying these animals, but you'll have to use other reference materials if you are serious about taxonomy.

A helpful book, though it has a few flaws. You might consider using this book and the Peterson Field Guide to Insects together -- the latter book relies on illustations, and it includes a form of taxonomic keys that are not that hard to use.

4 stars -- well worth the price.

Alan Holyoak, Dept of Biology, Manchester College (IN)

Even if I am not actually "in the field" I love to read the descriptions and see the photos of the insects and spiders in this book. You learn something new every time you pick it up. The photographs are very clear, often capturing an image of a difficult-to-photograph insect (some of them only 1/32" in size). The thumbnails make it easy to get yourself in the right general area by body type, then you move through the section to identify the specific insect/spider in question. The text descriptions of the spiders is, for me, the most interesting part of this book, and you'll come to appreciate arachnids like never before.

My only criticism of this book is that the editors decided to spend relatively less time on some of the insects that you are more likely to actually see (just two examples that come to mind are millipedes and centipedes), while spending a lot of time on insects that are very unlikely to be witnessed by most amateurs (for example, there is extensive coverage of mites and fleas). Of couse, no one would expect Audubon to be able to cover every angle of the insect world, and no matter what choice Audubon makes they will please some people and displease others. In future editions, however, I would love to see the same coverage of the rare insects with some expansion.

For educational purposes, however, this book is terrific. Children could definitely use it to begin to appreciate the diversity and importance of the insect world. Reading about very tiny insects -- even if they never actually see them -- will reinforce for children the idea that the world is full of life, even in places they can't see. Every description in this book should ignite a child's -- or an adult's -- imagination of what else is out there...

At the risk of repeating myself to readers who are searching for an insect field guide, I said in another review:

Consider the lucky birders. In North America there are less than 900 species of birds. While some may be only 3 or four inches long, others are measured in feet. New birding guides are issued every year. And while a few species, like the empidonax flycatchers may be difficult to tell apart, all of the species are illustrated in most guides, and 90% are identifiable if the birder gets a good look at them.

Now consider the amateur entomologist. There are over 80,000 species of insects in North America. Most insects are relatively small. Telling the difference between species may require examining the vein pattern in wings. The field guides to insects illustrate at most 700 insects. No wonder there are more bird watchers than insect watchers. And no wonder there hasn't been a major insect field guide published since 1981!

A field guide to insects then probably can't help you identify most specific species. The authors feel they have done their job if they can help you identify the family.

Unfortunately most, including this Audubon Guide, may not even do that.

To test insect guides I took a series of photographs of each of three insects and then tried to identify them with the help of the guides. They were pictures of a butterfly-like insect, a bee and a fly. To find an insect in Audubon one first looks through an index of over 100 different insect and spider silhouettes. Located next to the silhouettes are the pages in the guide where insects resembling the silhouette are grouped. One can also use a thumb tab located on the page edge of each set of plates to find the desired silhouette. Next one goes through the individual plates adjacent to the silhouette to find the picture of an insect resembling one's target. The text page relating to each insect shown is listed under its picture. The text provides a description of the insect family and behavior but no illustrations. The plates are ordered by color and shape and not by insect order to make it easy to identify an insect without knowing anything about its taxa. However, because of the literal nature of a photograph, one may not be able to identify the family of an insect not pictured.

In the case of my butterfly-like insect I was not able to identify it, although because I knew from other research that it was a Brown Skipper, I did find the picture of a different looking skipper. For my bee and my fly, I saw several similar insects but was unable to identify either as to family.

Unlike the other insect guides, the Audubon includes a section on spiders, which are not in the insect family. Since one is likely to encounter arachnids while searching for insecta, this may be convenient.

The Audubon has one of the easiest to use methods of finding an insect of any of the insect guides. However, if the guide doesn't include a picture of your insect in its 627 plates (it also has 63 spider plates), one may be unlikely to identify a specimen or its family. This may leave you as frustrated as any of the other insect guides.

Users who prefer drawings to photographs might want to examine the Peterson Field Guide, "Insects" by Donald Borror and Richard White. However, it too will probably leave you feeling unsatisfied.

The color photographs are vivid and in focus. The descriptive text is interesting and useful. However, this book ought to have been called our 25 favorite spiders and 75 favorite insects. I haven't been able to find a single local spider in the book (and we have many to choose from). It's really less of a field guide and more of a coffee table book.

Perhaps a rich abundance of information resides in this book, but unfortunately the abundance is soiled with incorrect information, making the reader responsible for the job of sorting the facts from the garbage.
Yes, the photographs are lovely, but the lovliness of the photographs make the situation all the worse because more readers are attracted to this book.
For example, the book states that although "tarantulas" of the SW United States are harmless, they are related to "deadly" ones in South America. Completely, 100% untrue. Maybe the author wanted to make this book exciting, injecting it with lies to spook the reader (no tarantula, from America to Asia, has been determined to be "deadly). I don't justify these false facts by calling them mistakes--this is more than an honest mistake based on misconception. Entomologists should know what they are writing about!

I bought this book because I am a photographer with a growing interest in spiders and insects, and I need to know what my subjects are. Before I bought this book, I mostly did Internet research to try to find the exact species. Since I'm not an entomologist or arachnologist, I'm sure you can imagine that my search words often weren't very effective (for example, brown spider in California). Now that I have this book, IDing spiders and insects is much easier. I'm not saying that everything I take a picture of is in here; in fact, the exact species often aren't. But most of the time I can narrow it down to the point where further research is much more successful. This book also explains the correct terminology, which is extremely helpful when searching online or in other books. I know a lot of people out there are disappointed because this book is missing so many species. But honestly, they should have known better than to expect a small FIELD GUIDE to contain so much. If you're looking for a complete encyclopedia of insects or spiders, this book will very disappointing. But if you're looking for a GUIDE (i.e., you're an amateur and you just need to be pointed in the right direction), then you should find this book extremely helpful.

This book has a decent array of insects, however its spiders section is definately lacking. I enjoy identifying the spiders and insects I see everywhere I go and I don't even bother to bring this book with me since I can never find a match. The pictures are very nice though, I wish more field guides had pictures instead of drawings.

Getting into macro photography, I was discovering all kinds of weird insects, and had no idea what they were. I knew that to be as professional as possible, I needed to be able to identify my tiny subjects as well as know their habits, preferred envirnonment and so on...

I like the way this book is organized. You have a table of contents of sorts that lists bug shapes. They are organized by similiar shape, and color.

Not ment to be read from cover to cover, this book is excellent for throwing into my camera bag for to be a field reference.

This is a good book and the pictures are beautiful, but most insects that I find aren't in this book. They only cover 700 species in the U.S. and Canada, which is too few. If you're just curious or just starting to study insects this is a good book for you, but if you're more science-oriented or advanced in your entymology, then the Peterson's guide may be a better choice.

I didn't find this book very helpful at all. It dosn't have a wide selection of spiders. I was looking for a picture of a Brown Recluse and it wasn't even mentioned. However the book did contain really good pictures.