Insect Identification Guide needed

I need a GOOD book for identifying insects. I'm in the US, southern Missouri, and need good pictures, along with information on the things that are eating my garden! I keep finding bugs I don't know that turn out to be bad by the time I can figure out what they are.

If you have a good one that will work in this area, please tell me :D

Thank you!!
:D

Edit: Thinking on it, I like how my bird and flower books are arranged, by color and size. When I'm looking for something that looks like THIS, if this one is close but not it, it will be right in this area, and I can flip pictures to get close enough to do a better job of IDing things.

And beetles are the worst for identifying, I definitely need good pictures of LOTS of them.

"Guide to all the beetles of a Missouri garden"  Is there such a book?  :D

yeah, beetles are the group of animals with the most species worldwide. i’ve heard it said that if you had one example of each animal species on earth in a line, every 10th one would be a beetle…and half of those would be weevils. there are so many species that a truly complete ID guide may not exist. that said, audubon and petersons are my usual go-to’s for general id’ing.

if you really need to get everything, the best option may be finding a dichotomous key to get you down to the ‘family’ level, and then further keys to go down farther. you’d need at least a good magnifying glass (if not a dissecting scope) and some knowledge of the names of some of the tiny parts of insects (which i could help with. i was |_| this close to becoming an insect taxonomist). or y’know, just post’em here.

I have the National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America. I've been pretty happy with it so far. I like that in the table of contents, they list the insects by order and give an example picture of one from said order that's representative. They also have a list of the orders and characteristic physical features and habits of each towards the beginning of the book. It has good pictures and fair descriptions of behavior as well as key features to look for when identifying.

This one is online, but I really like this bugfinder website: https://www.insectidentification.org/bugfinder-start.php I like that it has a couple different ways to approach your search. You can go by shape. You can choose what category of insect, what colors and what state. My only complaint is that sometimes, their definition of what color something is seems way different than mine and so I won't find something because of that. Sometimes, I just go to the type of insect I'm looking for, say butterflies of Indiana, and look through all the pictures. Sometimes I do it for a difficult to ID one, but I also like looking through to familiarize myself with the ones who live here. For me, that sets my brain up to recognize those patterns if I see them in the future and often, I'll just remember the name of the insect without having to go back and look it up.

I have The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control, copyright 1996. Newer editions are available, although I don't know how much they've changed.



So far, it's enabled me to identify every pest and disease problem I've encountered in my southeastern US garden. But that's about all I use it for. I don't find it very helpful for cures and controls.

Web site wise, Missouri has long impressed me.  Check mdc.mo.gov
The site is really well developed.