Insects of the World: Biodiversity, Taxonomy, Family Identification Keys

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.