Format

E-BOOK
PDF 19 x 11 cm

Species

30

Illustrations

349

ISBN

978-3-947278-50-3 Smartphone Edition
978-3-947278-49-7 Tablet Edition

About the book

The identification and recognition of the approximately 65 bumblebee species occurring in Europe is difficult. There are few useful morphological characters and identification by the often conspicuous colouration of the hairs is very unreliable, especially because of the great variability of this colouration in many species.

The male genital capsule offers the beginner many useful features and an easy way to divide the many species into about 15 groups (subgenera). Both preparation and examination of the genital capsule are considered difficult. The main obstacles are (1) delineating the parts of a genital capsule and (2) recognising the shape of these complicated three-dimensional structures.

However, with a little patience and skill, even the beginner can learn these features and use them successfully after a short time. Good illustrations make it easy to find the features of these rather small structures and a simple text explains to beginners how to work with genital capsules.

Genital capsule colour coded

Genital capsule in 3D for viewing with stereo glasses

In the introduction presented here, beginners are helped to distinguish the different parts by colour coding and to recognise the shapes of the genital capsule by 3D illustrations. With 349 illustrations (300 of which are raster electron microscope images) of 30 selected species, the 15 subgenera occurring in Europe are presented on 437 pages (most in at least 2 species).

Beschreibung der Genitalkapsel Bombus hortorum in Text und Abbildung

The most important features of the genital capsule for each species group are described in a combination of short text and illustration, numbered reference arrows make it easier to find the features in the illustrations.

A simple identification guide (70 pages with 60 illustrations) enables the identification of unknown genital capsules down to the species group. Here, too, the combination of text and illustration is intended to facilitate the work.