Thank you for the kind comments and suggestions I receive via email. A few of you made the following excellent observation about the structure of the Entophiles insect records.
When you want to identify an insect using the Entophiles pages, the first page expects you to make a general determination as to the type (Order) of insect before you are taken to pages with photographs. This might be difficult if you are not familiar with characteristics that typify each ordinal group of insects.
The answer to this problem lies in two sets of pages planned for the BugBios Web site. The first is a available as simple list of all the insect records presented within the Entophiles records. The second will be an "Ordinal Key" available through the Class Insecta section of the site. The future Key will ask you a series of branching yes/no questions about your insect specimen that lead you to an ordinal identification. You can then browse through the Entophiles records to see if you recognize your specimen. If not, you can continue searching the Web with at least a general idea of what to search for. The ordinal key is a fairly large undertaking so please be patient and check back from time to time.
Many of you sent me email about your sightings of a strange and wonderful insect found hovering like a hummingbird in front of flowers. Many of you have also seen the long tongue it uses to probe the flowers for nectar. These beautiful moths, (Order Lepidoptera) know as Sphinx or Hawk moths, belong to the family Sphingidae. I currently have three Sphingid records. Although none are hovering, I photographed one in Ecuador, while the second and third I photographed in Indonesia. I do have other images of North American specimens and hope to post these in the future.
