Insects Are EVERYWHERE

With some estimates of over 10 million species it would be safe to assume that you could never collect them all. Yet as a collective group, scientists are joining forces to place each variety on its own branch of the tree of life. This project is my attempt of contribution.

All life on Earth belongs to groups of similar individuals. They are placed into their groupings based upon unique characteristics. These groups can be rather vague (Animalia) to extremely specific (Pempigus betae). A simple hierarchy for insects is given under the picture of the caterpillar to the right. If you are interested in learning more about this classification process, click here (link not active yet).

Scientists collect specimens and use their unique characteristics to determine precisely which group the organism belongs. In order to do so, they use a tool called a dichotomous key. These keys use terms which describe the appearance of an organism in simple yes or no terms. Either the specimen has the characteristic or it doesn't. They are sorta like those choose your own adventure books we read as kids, but the choices are already determined based upon the organism. If you are interested in learning more about dichotomous keys, click here (link not active yet).

Click the following link to go to a key containing examples from my collection.

Class Insecta

If you already know which order you are interested in then you may link directly to it by clicking on its name in the list below.

Order Coleoptera
Order Diptera
Order Hemiptera
Order Lipidoptera
Order Strepsiptera

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Update

The few order pages now have links. There is not information on them yet, but I wanted to get them working so that I could start with the key. You can now follow the key to either the order Diptera or Strepsiptera. There are still not images for all the characteristics. I need to get me a better lens so that I can really capture the characteristics of the insects which set them apart. I hope to get images up and order pages made for the specimens that I do have in my collection sometime this week. These will just be base images as I will obtain better examples over time.
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Friday, May 7, 2010

Blog Kickoff

This blog is open to any and all who may be or may become an insect enthusiast. My original thoughts for this blog was to create the webs biggest and best key to insects. While the design that I have in mind will be better(I feel) than what is already out there I cannot compete, nor do I wish to compete with sites like Bugguide. They are awesome and have a wealth of knowledge and experts at your disposal. Much of my information will probably come from sites like these and I will link out to them whenever possible. However, the images here will be from my own collection and taken by me. I think it will be fun to see how many of the millions of species I can come in contact with on my own.

Please understand that this is a work in progress and will never be completed in my lifetime. The key will not be an all inclusive key. It will only contain the orders, families, etc. that I have collected and identified. It is only as accurate as I am and if you see an error please let me know as I am not an expert on all types of insects. Please let me know as well if you are able to help me complete an identification. I will post indicating whenever I have added new examples to the key.
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