Читать книгу Backyard Bugs - Jaret C. Daniels - Страница 5

How to Use This Book

This book is organized by where you’re likely to encounter specific insects. There are seven main sections—At Lights, In or Near Water, In the Air, On Flowers, On Structures, On the Ground, and On Plants. Of course, these aren’t hard-and-fast rules, but they are a good place to start identifying the insects you find.

Within each section, insects are organized by their order—a scientific grouping of similar insects. For example, butterflies and moths all belong to an order—Lepidoptera. Many of these orders are relatively familiar—and we’ve provided example species to help guide you—but some are likely less familiar. To help you, each account includes full-color photos of each type of insect; if you don’t recognize what kind of bug you’ve found, follow these steps.

Look in the section where you found the animal.

If you know what kind of critter it is (a butterfly or moth), look for that grouping.

If you don’t know it, flip through and look at the photos to find bugs with a similar shape to find its order.

Within each order, the insects and other critters are organized by average size, from smallest to largest.

Note: While this book focuses mostly on insects, we’ve also included a number of other “creepy crawly” animals, such as spiders, centipedes and millipedes, earthworms, and slugs. Such animals are often lumped together with insects, and while they aren’t technically insects, they are common and interesting enough to merit including.