Pacific Northwest Insects sets a new standard for insect identification, making it an indispensable resource to naturalists, educators, gardeners, and others. Engaging and accessible, Pacific Northwest Insects features detailed species accounts, each with a vivid photograph of a living adult, along with information for distinguishing similar species, allowing the reader to identify more than 3,000 species found from southern British Columbia to northern California, and as far east as Montana. The book features most of the commonly encountered insects, spiders, scorpions, millipedes, centipedes, and kin in the Pacific Northwest, as well as representatives of an amazing variety of unusual and interesting insects living in the area. After more than a decade of research, reviewing hundreds of thousands of museum specimens and scouring the technical entomological literature, Merrill Peterson has brought together for the first time in a single volume a wealth of information on the region's insect life.
Merrill A. Peterson is professor and chair of biology at Western Washington University and adjunct professor of entomology at Washington State University.
"Beautiful and highly effective"
– Edward O. Wilson, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University
"The first regional field guide that allows amateur bug-watchers to accurately identify a broad range of insects to the species level."
– The Seattle Times
"This book, without doubt, is the best single guide to the identification of the region's insects."
– Rob Cannings, Curator Emeritus of Entomology, Royal British Columbia Museum and author of Dragonflies of British Columbia and the Yukon
"Accurate identification of our local insects becomes practical for the first time, thanks to this splendid book from one of our foremost ecologists and educators."
– Robert Michael Pyle, Ph.D., Founder of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, author of The Butterflies of Cascadia
"This is the book I'll be recommending for gardeners and hikers who want to identify the insects that share their garden and woodlands. Thank you Dr. Peterson."
– Sharon J. Collman, founding architect of the international Master Gardener Program and Professor Emeritus, WSU Cooperative Extension