David L. Wagner
Princeton Field Guides
Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
2005, 512 pp.
Price: $60.00, hard cover; $29.95, soft cover
ISBN: 0-691-12143-5

Butterflies and moths are among our most beloved animal colleagues and have received near-vertebrate levels of attention from scientists and amateur naturalists alike. Their immature stages, however, have usually lacked comparable popularity, at least among Western adults. Caterpillars have, at worst, been vilified as pest enemies, sometimes rising to the level of admiration for their rags-to-riches metamorphosis to the colorful adults.

Ask most small children, however, and they will identify caterpillars as familiar playmates and fascinating subjects of observation. Children, and those of us who retain this childlike fascination throughout our lives, have until now had limited resources for identifying these marvelous little animals outside of the scattered and technical scientific literature. Considering the abundance, diversity, and exuberant shapes and colors of caterpillars, this has been a major gap in North American field guides.

David Wagner of the University of Connecticut has filled this gap in grand style with an attractive volume in the Princeton Field Guide series. Wagner has used his extensive field experience with natural history and close-up photographic skills, honed from years of producing U.S. Forest Service caterpillar guides, to produce a popular reference for common eastern North American caterpillars.

Although the book makes no attempt to cover microlepidopteran larvae, for larger species the guide should be reasonably comprehensive for everyday use, treating and illustrating almost 700 species, about 400 of them with full-page coverage. For each species, an outstanding high-quality color photo of the caterpillar tops the page, with a color photo inset below of the adult moth or butterfly preceding the text covering Recognition characters, Occurrence of the species in terms of habitat and geographic distribution, Common Foodplants, and general Remarks, which often include interesting aspects of behavior and/or variability in appearance. Novices will find it easy to match up caterpillars merely by flipping though the pages, and more experienced entomologists will like the organization into lepidopteran families, color-coded on the top outer page corners for easy reference.

In addition to the bulk of the text surveying common eastern North American caterpillars, the book contains a highly useful introductory section with brief treatments of several topics including morphology, caterpillar look-alikes, how to find and rear caterpillars, and basic aspects of lepidopteran natural history and classification. Of special note in this introductory part are the excellent illustrated primer to photographing caterpillars; the short but insightful section on collecting, vouchering, and conservation; and the list of caterpillar projects for students that schools and nature centers should find helpful. The book concludes with a glossary of common terms, a generous list of additional useful references, and indexes by foodplant and caterpillar.

The hardbound copy I have is very attractively produced and sturdily constructed. It is sized for easy field use, if a bit on the large and heavy size for most pockets. Princeton has meticulously reproduced Wagner’s artful color photographs; the book is simply a pleasure to look through even for nonentomologists.

In summary, this is a delightfully presented yet scientifically rigorous addition to the North American field guide literature. As a teacher of university courses in insect biology and classification, I will use this book heavily; yet it is attractive and simply written enough to be much more widely appealing for children, teachers, and indeed anyone with interest in natural history. David Wagner is to be congratulated for communicating his knowledge of the Lepidoptera so clearly and appealingly to the rest of us.

J. B. Whitfield
Department of Entomology
University of Illinois
Urbana, IL 61801
E-mail: jwhitfie@life.uiuc.edu
American Entomologist
Vol. 52, No.2, Summer 2006