This handbook is a synthesis of knowledge, a practical handbook and a learning tool. The authors wanted to be understandable and accessible to the widest possible audience: From all of our fellow entomologists, amateurs and scientists, beginners and experienced practitioners, parataxonomists and their instructors, « alpha taxonomists » to systematic geneticists and high-level cladists, students and teachers, as well as to those who must sort insect samples and prepare biodiversity lists, consultants, people who work for the protection of nature, environmentalists, agronomists and farmers, veterinarians, forestry people, field naturalists, and to all of us loving nature with an open mind to all living treasures available in this world.
All insect orders are presented in detail. A chapter is devoted to each class or order, except Zoraptera, Embioptera, Mantophasmatodea and Grylloblattodea, which are gatheredin a single chapter. This handbook is useful for the recognition of orders and families with an identification key as the heart of each chapter. For orders over hundred families, identification keys deal only with most of them. For each case, the authors tried to find a compromise between the need to be close to reality and keep the ID simple and practical to use. The identification keys do not include the few families that are unlikely to occur in nature, either because of their limited number of species or because of their limited geographical distribution. Globally, each chapter includes at least a general introduction, morphological characters of the adult (and possibly larvae), general biology of the order, the classification of the order together with a table of all families (with some or all of the sub-families), a key for the recognition of families (always adults and sometimes larvae), the main websites, and an updated selected bibliography.
Artwork supports the text for improving both understanding and practical use. Selected literature was based upon general studies, identification publications and catalogs.
