Identification, Images, & Information
For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
For the United States & Canada
WHAT GOOD ARE BUGS? INSECTS IN THE WEB OF LIFE
By Gilbert Waldbauer
Harvard Unviversity Press, 2003
ISBN: 0-674-01027-2
Cite: 38669 with citation markup [cite:38669]
This book is aimed at the general public and as such the text is very lightly sprinkled with scientific names. Should you wish to investigate something further, then the carefully selected reading list for each chapter becomes very useful. I've already used it with great advantage.
In it I found something profoundly true and worth bearing in mind when you next spot a bug:
"For every insect we see, there are tens of thousands that we do not see, because they are small or hidden beneath the soil, within a plant or an animal, under a rock, or in some other "crack or crevice" of the environment."
For more see this excellent review, and more comments here.