Butterflies & Moths: The Clearest Recognition Guide Available (DK Smithsonian Handbook) Paperback – May 15, 2002

The illustrations, photos, etc. are beautiful. There are more butterflies and moths than I knew about. Looking forward to spending time reading it. DK books are the greatest.

Tons of colored pictures of Butterfly and Moths, lots of information too.I bought this book used very happy great condition.

The definitive guide to butterflies and moths. Great for identifying specific moths and butterflies from around the globe.

"Butterflies and Moths" by David Carter, DK Smithsonian Handbooks (DK), New York, 2002 (1st American Ed. 1992). ISBN - 978-0-7894-8983-8. SC 304 pages. 8.5" x 5 ¾" x ¾".Author David Carter, entomologist at Natural History Museum, London, has 40 years experience as Lepidoptera specialist and has also written several books & scientific papers on insects. The 600 plus photographs in this handbook are by Frank Greenway and shows 500 different species in full color, completely indexed.Introductory commentary discusses the origin of Lepidoptera, differences between butterflies and moths, depicts their life cycles of egg, larvae, caterpillar and pupae (chrysalis of butterfly & cocoons of moths), and as adults - and describes their special features of mimicry, warning colors & mimicry associations, camouflage, & poisonous features, etc.Conveniently, the author separates the butterflies and moths into their scientific "families" - giving numerous examples (species) of each of the 5 known butterfly families and also many examples of species within the 22 families of moths, - noting that some moth family members and many species of Lepidoptera are unknown, under reported or poorly documented, indicating an area for further study.By convention, using Carl Linnaeus nomenclature, orders of insects as Lepidoptera ("scaly wings") have names ending in "idae": thusly, the 5 orders of Butterflies are Hesperi-, Papilion-, Pier-, Lycaen-, and Nymphal-. Example: the well-known Genus species Papilio glaucis, common name "Tiger Swallowtail", is in the Papilionidae family. This handbook has additional information that tells us its geographic location, description of special markings and full-color picture of the caterpillar & adult, and the wingspan range of 3 ½" to 6 ½". Also featured is the Saturniidae "Atlas Moth", (Attacus atlas) with wingspan range from 5 ½" - 12". And so it goes, for 500 different species of butterflies & moths. All total there are 170,000 known species of Lepidoptera of which circa 1/10th or 17,000 are butterflies, insects evolving after the moths and both after advent and emergence of flowering flora.The book's size and flexible cover permits its use as a field manual - a scientific guide scrutinized for accuracy by the Smithsonian Institute's scientific staff. This handbook will never be outdated, only updated as new species are found and verified with DNA as needed.Finis

This book has so much information in it about butterflies and moths. I love the information it provides: scientific name, caterpillar info, host plants, location to be found. It contains pictures of all the butterflies and moth and some caterpillars. I gave this book 4 stars because I’d like to see pictures of all the caterpillars along with its butterfly. I would also find it a little easier to go through if the was set up by location rather than species. But overall very informative about butterflies and moths of the world.

i purchased this because i do some adult coloring books and i wanted my butterflies and moths to be realistically colored. perfect to refer to.

I was looking not for a thorough reference, but rather for a high-level overview of the species from the entire world. I have more detailed literature about insects, yet I wanted to get something which will help to grasp the diversity and beauty of such an immense group of animals.This book is exactly what I wanted. It has plenty of high quality illustrations and the choice of species is very good from my point of view:- you can easily see similarity and oddity in a particular group (e.g. family)- species from different parts of the world illustrate how one group can diverge- my special like is for cases where odd species demonstrate convergent evolution in distant groups (you’d need to review the book at least twice to start noticing them)

Perfect.

ESte libro fue para mi esposo, y le encanto, el libro llego muy bien, en perfetas condiciones y rapido

Muito lindo , maravilhoso mesmo.

Great reference book!!

This is a wonderful compendium of photographs of butterflies and moths, ideal for learning how to distinguish different species, the differences between butterflies and moths, providing a wealth of detail and info about habitat and location.

El libro contiene información básica y clara. el contenido y las ilustraciones son buenas con datos interesantes. además de que llegó en excelentes condiciones.