Encyclopedia of South American Aquatic Insects: Odonata - Zygoptera

This beautiful volume, with hundreds of fascinating hand-drawn illustrations, completes the two-volume work on the order Odonata in the Encyclopedia of South American Aquatic Insects. The Zygoptera volume encompasses the small dragonflies often called damselflies. The sections on the morphology of the adults and larvae are followed by discussions of factors influencing their distribution and instructions on the methods used to observe, collect, preserve, and examine specimens.

The author, Dr. Charles W. Heckman, has performed ecological research in Laos, Thailand, Germany, Brazil, and the United States. His publications include books on rice field ecology in Thailand and the Pantanal wetland in western Brazil, as well as many monographs and shorter publications on various aspects of biology and environmental sciences. He undertook the preparation of the Encyclopedia of South American Aquatic Insects to produce a reference work with which researchers in South America can identify the species they encounter without having to first complete exhaustive searches of the literature, including papers published on several continents in different languages. The lack of such a tool has long impeded progress in faunal surveys, ecology, and other fields of science. Dr. Heckman's extensive experience identifying aquatic insect species using less than optimal literature has allowed him to develop an ability for recognizing the morphological features most useful for distinguishing one species from another, and this ability comes to the aid of the users of his keys to the South American aquatic insect species.