A Field Guide to Insects (Paperback)

~ Donald J. Borror (Author, Illustrator), (Author, Illustrator), Roger Tory Peterson (Editor)
Key Phrases: oral vibrissae absent, oral vibrissae present, costa broken, Honey Bee, House Fly, Pacific Coast (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Detailed descriptions of insect orders, families, and many individual species are illustrated with 1,300 drawings and 142 superb color paintings. Illustrations - which use the unique Peterson Identification System to distinguish one insect from another - include size lines to show the actual length of each insect. A helpful glossary explains the technical terms of insect anatomy.

About the Author

Richard E. White is a research entomologist at the United States National Museum in Washington and the author of articles and research papers chiefly in his special field of beetles. As an artist he is most experienced in portraying insects, but he also illustrates general biological subjects. Donald J. Borror is a professor of entomology at Ohio State University and the author of books, articles, and recordings. With Dwight M. DeLong he is the coauthor of a widely used textbook, An Introduction to the Study of Insects, now in its fourth edition. Dr. Borror has made several records of bird songs and insect sounds. With Richard D. Alexander he recorded The Songs of Insects, one of the Sounds of Nature disks in the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology series. Roger Tory Peterson, one of the world's greatest naturalists, received every major award for ornithology, natural science, and conservation, as well as numerous honorary degrees, medals, and citations, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Peterson Identification System has been called the greatest invention since binoculars, and the Peterson Field Guides® are credited with helping to set the stage for the environmental movement.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2nd edition (April 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395911702
• ISBN-13: 978-0395911709
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #48,388 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

152 of 154 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tougher to use for the casual amateur, but a good book!, June 30, 2000

By	Alan R. Holyoak (Idaho) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: FG INSECTS CL (Peterson Field Guide Series, 19) (Hardcover)

Most amateur naturalists tend to expect page after page of photographs or drawings when they purchase a field guide. That is not what you will get in this book.

The authors, Borrer and White, have developed a sort of mini-entomology book for use in the field. The first part of the book contains helpful hints and instructions on how to collect and preserve insects. That section is followed by about 15 pages on the biology and taxonomy of this huge group. Understanding this information is essential if one is put together a useful insect collection. It also helps the insect watcher better understand what they are seeing in the ecology and body plans of these animals. Those sections are followed by over 300 pages of information that will help the determined insect watcher/collecter figure out the kind of animal they are looking at.

You should be advised that this book will NOT help you identify insects to the level of genus and species. The taxonomic information in this book targets primarily the family level (the level above the genus level).

Some reviewers have commented that the lack of color illustrations renders this book nearly useless. You need to understand that, for the serious collector, there are characteristics much more important in figuring out what they are looking at than color. The book is loaded with the kinds of information used by professional entomologists to identify the animals they study.

You should also be reminded that there are thousands of insect species, and many regional variations of those species, so no single field guide could ever hope to provide a comprehensive treatment of the group.

If you want/need a bounty of color photos to supplement your study, I recommend that you use this book along with a field guide like those available from the Audubon Society (E.g., The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders, which has over 700 photos of these animals).

The Peterson guide relies on illustrations rather than photos (illustrations are, I believe, far superior to photographs for identification work). There are both color and B/W illustrations in the book. There are also many helpful line drawings of body parts important to helping you ID insects.

I give this book 4 stars only because it tends to be a bit tougher for the casual amateur to use, but recommend it highly for the advanced amateur, as well as for general reference for the professional.

Well worth the price -- but not a child's book.

Good luck!

Alan Holyoak, Dept of Biology, Manchester College

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This reprint of the 1970 field guide remains one of the best, May 20, 1999

By A Customer

The guide aims to cover insects in America north of Mexico to family level. Few families are illustrated by more than a single figure of an adult and, while generally a single sex is shown, exceptions are made for some insects, for example in the color plates of damselflies. Where the sexes are very distinct (e.g. tussock moths or butterflies) it would have been helpful to show figures of both sexes. The book is predominantly one designed for identification and while it provides excellent coverage and a wonderful selection of figures, it rarely includes keys to help the novice zero on a particular family. The endpapers provide a quick and helpful guide to the principal insect orders, but once that level is reached, the reader must hunt out the descriptions of each suborder and/or superfamily to determine the appropriate group. The significant criteria that distinguish these suborders/superfamilies would be much easier to learn and compare were their descriptions put together on the same page rather than scattered through the section waiting to be discovered by searching the text or looking up the appropriate page by using the index. There is good chapter on collection methods and a brief introduction to insect structure and growth. Deficiences include the following - The book was originally published in 1970: however, the publisher has not taken the opportunity to update the original bibliography in any of the reprints. Nor have resources like Entomological organizations been listed. While the worldwide web makes it easier to access this new information, it would have been helpful to see the experts' recommendations.

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More Frustration, November 22, 2004

By	Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.


The Peterson guide provided a decision tree just inside the front cover that helped me to identify the order of the insects. The tree also provided the page of the guide where the entries for this order could be found. Next I had to flip through the entries, which are arranged in taxological order, examining each of the black and white drawings to find an insect that most closely resembled my specimen. Occasionally a species listing bore a reference to a color drawing found on collected plates in the center of the book. Occasionally detailed drawing were provided for identification, such as a comparison of the wing venation of a family of bees. This information might have proved useful for identification if I had captured the insect. The drawings also had the arrows that Peterson has developed to highlight significant identification features.

I should note that some guides use photographs while others, like Peterson use drawings. My experience is that either method may be more advantageous in a specific case.

To find my butterfly-like insect I had to read carefully through the text on the order Leipidoptera to find that skippers could be differentiated by their clubbed antenna. No reference was made to their characteristic pose while perched. I was not able to identify my insect below the family level.

My bee seemed closest to a carpenter bee, although without an actual specimen I could not make a final identification.

I could not identify my fly as to family.

Although a lack of photographs may prove a disadvantage for identifying particular species, I found the black and white drawing usually useful for identifying insect families, although even more illustrations would have been useful for identification. Even though this was what I considered to be the best of the guides I reviewed, I still was not contented with it.

Those who prefer photographs to drawings may want to consider the "National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders". But be warned that like the Peterson Guide, that volume will also be less than satisfactory.