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balsa wrote:so excited does anyone know if they're maybe using pinned insects at nationals?

That would be amazing. They should definitely get a Phasmatodea.

caseyotis wrote:

balsa wrote:so excited does anyone know if they're maybe using pinned insects at nationals?

That would be amazing. They should definitely get a Phasmatodea.

Or a Cicindela.

Tiktaalik wrote:

caseyotis wrote:

balsa wrote:so excited does anyone know if they're maybe using pinned insects at nationals?

That would be amazing. They should definitely get a Phasmatodea.

Or a Cicindela.

Or a Dactylotum bicolor.

caseyotis wrote:

hexagonaria wrote:It looks like the order Coleoptera is the Passeriformes of entomolgy!
If you did ornithology you know what I mean.

This is to say that it has a lot of families, no? I didn't do Ornithology, but I definitely know what Passeriformes are.
Beetles are definitely going to suck, though.

When I did the event last time it was offered, my partner and I split the list.

She was like "Ok, I'll take Coleoptera and Hemiptera (beetles and true bugs) and you can do everything else". We actually did pretty well though, and she honestly probably had the harder part.

Diptera is the worst though, in my opinion. Most of those flies (apart from craneflies and mosquitoes) all look the same, it's very hard to distinguish them. At least for me, it was.

gneissisnice wrote: When I did the event last time it was offered, my partner and I split the list.

She was like "Ok, I'll take Coleoptera and Hemiptera (beetles and true bugs) and you can do everything else". We actually did pretty well though, and she honestly probably had the harder part.

Diptera is the worst though, in my opinion. Most of those flies (apart from craneflies and mosquitoes) all look the same, it's very hard to distinguish them. At least for me, it was.

I will definitely keep that in mind - I'm doing Diptera and Hemiptera.

gneissisnice wrote:

caseyotis wrote:

hexagonaria wrote:It looks like the order Coleoptera is the Passeriformes of entomolgy!
If you did ornithology you know what I mean.

This is to say that it has a lot of families, no? I didn't do Ornithology, but I definitely know what Passeriformes are.
Beetles are definitely going to suck, though.

When I did the event last time it was offered, my partner and I split the list.

She was like "Ok, I'll take Coleoptera and Hemiptera (beetles and true bugs) and you can do everything else". We actually did pretty well though, and she honestly probably had the harder part.

Diptera is the worst though, in my opinion. Most of those flies (apart from craneflies and mosquitoes) all look the same, it's very hard to distinguish them. At least for me, it was.

Syrphids and robber flies are also pretty easy.

Has anyone looked at a field guides other than the Audubon?

silverheart7 wrote:Has anyone looked at a field guides other than the Audubon?

I've been using the NWF one since the Audubon one annoys me since it groups them into groups based on their basic appearance rather than their correct phylogenetic groups, which isn't good since we have to ID the insects in here according to family and order.

Also, does anyone know how frequently the National Audubon Society updates its field guide (for Insects & Spiders of North America, as I am under the assumption that this is the widely used edition)? I've been alternating between that and Wikipedia (shame, shame, I know) as sources for general info on the Orders, but the field guide's stats regarding the number of species identified worldwide or in North America are waaay off compared to Wiki's in some cases. I checked the date of the book and it's far back in 2000... if there are any newer ones, it's news to me. If not I'll probably just switch to NWF or maybe Peterson.

The Audubon guide is quite outdated. I remember looking at a species in a completely new order, but Audubon still had the old classification. I've been looking at NWF for a little bit, and I like it, but according to the rules on the entomology list, the taxonomic scheme and questions will be based on Audubon. So unless NWF and Audubon have the same information, I'll probably still use Audubon at the moment, although it desperately needs a lot of updating.