Identifying British Beetles

[Yashca]

If I wanted to get a decent book on identifying british beetles, which would be the best choice for me? Hopefully costing less than £100 pounds.

[Meta menardi]

I think that is quite a tall order, but I would love to be corrected. What about going down a little with your aspirations and going for a subset of that massive area of beasties?

[oxycera]

I agree, start with a family such as ground beetles - there are handbooks available - but you'll need a microscope of course and all the rest of the equipment. A very good visual guide is 'A field guide in colour to beetles' by K.W.Harde, but of course this can only give an overview. It all depends on how expert you wish to become.

[Dogghound]

Or you could always post images up on here

[oxycera]

Well, you could do - but then how would anyone acquire expertise?

[Paul mabbott]

Yes, I go along with the advice to (a) get to recognise the different families and (b) concentrate on some of the more 'doable' families. Some families are a lifetime's work for experts! You will need a microscope for some but a good loupe can be sufficient with some species. There are some good web-sites but the best are family-based. The two best all-species sites are The Coleopterist (advantage that it only has British species) and Koleopterologie (bigger, better but is German therefore has beetles which have not yet been seen in England).

Also, it's sometimes easier to make sense of a beetle if you can get personal advice - either on the net or through your neighbourhoos coleopterist!

[oxycera]

Most local natural history societies should have at least one competent coleopterist within their ranks and in my experience almost invariably helpful to beginners. Will also provide useful info on specialist papers, if you decide that you want to get in that deep.

[oxycera]

Most local natural history societies should have at least one competent coleopterist within their ranks and in my experience almost invariably helpful to beginners. Will also provide useful info on specialist papers, if you decide that you want to get in that deep.

[Laurence Clemons]

The colour guide by K.W. Harde is a good introduction but the standard work on British beetles is A Practical Handbook of British Beetles by N.H. Joy. A facsimile edition was published by E.W. Classey in the 1970s and is still widely available for much less than £100. Note, however, that very many species have been added since then so you will also need New British Beetles: Species not in Joy's practical handbook by P.J. Hodge and the current checklist on the Coleopterist's website The Coleopterist.

[JonSadler]

I'd be tempted to go for a family to start with as suggested by an earlier poster. The ground beetles, Longhorns and ladybirds are probably the best bets they have good new(ish) keys:

Ground beetles: Martin Luff's new Royal Entomological Soc. Handbook available via the Field Studies Council

Longhorns: two keys in recent issues of British Wildlife Magazine.

Ladybirds: A Naturalist's handbook by Mike Majerus.

As you gain experience of these you'll be absorbing knowledge on other groups. And don't be afraid to ask advice as you work on the groups either on this forum or other groups (British Beetles Yahoo group etc).

Best of luck

Jon