A Field Guide to Insects of Australia

Whether you're an amateur insect enthusiast, a student, or an entomologist, this completely revised new edition of A Field Guide to Insects in Australia will help you to identify insects from all the major groups. With more photographs, species, and up-to-date information, it will enable you to differentiate between a dragonfly and a damselfly or a cricket and a grasshopper. You'll find cockroaches, termites, praying mantises, beetles, cicadas, moths, butterflies, ants, bees, and many more. More than 600 colour photographs show the insects in their natural habitats, while more than 50 line drawings clearly illustrate the differences where identification is tricky.

Paul Zborowski is a qualified entomologist with over 25 years experience of field based study of insects and related creatures in habitats all over the world's tropics. This practical knowledge is available on a consultancy basis to documentary film makers - providing a location search, subject behaviour & capture, and studio and field set design and building. Paul has worked with diverse film crews from the BBC Bristol Wildlife Unit, NHK TV and Tokyo TV of Japan, Discovery Channel of America, Wildvisuals and Quest of Australia, and produces reference, field guides and children’ s books. Ross Storey spent most of his professional life studying, collecting and curating insects for the University of Queensland and the Queensland Department of Primary Industries. He described many new species and wrote scientific papers, especially on native dung beetles, on which he is a recognised world authority. Before his death in 2008, he worked as a taxonomist and curator of the QDPI's Mareeba insect collection, one of Australia's premier collections of tropical insects.

Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 What is an Insect?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Insect Life Cycles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Crypsis and Mimicry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Collecting Insects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Classification and a Key to the Insect Orders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Springtails, Proturans and Diplurans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Bristletails and Silverfish. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Mayflies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Dragonflies and Damselflies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Stoneflies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Cockroaches and Termites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Mantids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Earwigs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Crickets and Grasshoppers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Stick Insects and Leaf Insects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Web-spinners or Embiids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Booklice, Psocids and Lice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 True Bugs, Hoppers, Scale Insects and Aphids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Thrips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Alderflies and Dobsonflies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Lacewings, Antlions and Mantis Flies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Beetles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Stylopids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Scorpion Flies and Hanging Flies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Fleas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Flies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Caddisflies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Moths and Butterflies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 Wasps, Ants, Bees and Sawflies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 Further Reading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321