RES Handbook: British Orthoptera and Allied Insects

The orthopteroid orders include the Orthoptera (bush-crickets, crickets, groundhoppers and grasshoppers), Phasmida (stick-insects), Embioptera (webspinners), Blattodea (cockroaches), Mantodea (praying mantises) and Dermaptera (earwigs). This handbook covers the orthopteroid insects native to the British Isles and Channel Islands, as well as migrants, regularly reported adventive species and naturalised aliens, including species established inside buildings and heated plant houses, in addition to those normally found outdoors.

This is an exciting time for British entomology. Recent years have seen the arrival of numerous insect species new to the British list. This handbook includes notes on the identification of a number of species of Orthoptera present on the near continent, which could plausibly find their way to the British Isles in the future. This handbook will allow the identification of specimens with a high level of precision by means of keys, tables and descriptions, which are supported by colour photographs giving general views of the insects as well as showing anatomical details of diagnostic importance. Where relevant to the purposes of identification, examples of colour variants of the various species are included.

The author has maintained a lifelong interest in entomology while devoting special attention to the study of the orthopteroid insects. He has been a regular contributor to local and national recording schemes since the 1970s and was for many years the county recorder for Orthoptera in Sussex. He has published papers on Orthoptera from the British Isles, Europe and Africa, as well as a guidebook to the grasshoppers and crickets of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. John Paul's professional background is in medical microbiology. This handbook updates and considerably expands on the information provided in the original RES orthopteroid handbook by W.D. Hincks, last revised in 1956.

This handbook will be of value to anyone with an interest in Orthoptera and allied insects as well as to students of entomology, ecologists, horticulturalists, pest controllers and general naturalists.