Field Guide to the Spiders of California and the Pacific Coast States (Volume 108) (California Natural History Guides)

The book is written by Richard Adams and is another in the series of California Natural History Guides published by University of California Press. It is illustrated by Dr. Tim Manolis. Dr. Manolis authored another in the California Natural History Guides, i.e., Dragonflies and Damselflies of California. I met Dr. Manolis at a lecture he gave to our local bird group. Tim, as I think he would prefer to be called, told me he had a Ph.D. in ornithology and knew nothing about the odonates but was requested to write the book on odonates, and it took two years of 8 hour a day study of odonates before authoring this guide to dragonflies and damselflies.I am a nature photographer with an almost total lack of ability to identify all but the most obvious odonate species. So when I emailed Tim a picture of what I thought was a bluet, Tim would immediately reply and tell me, when he could, what species it was. Often damselflies can only be identified with genus and species by examining their genitalia, another interesting fact I learned. I quickly learned that among species like bluets, ID by photo alone is often confined to telling what genus the damselfly is.Not too long ago I discovered Tim had illustrated Field Guide to Spiders of California. Now I send him the photos I have of various local spiders along with my guess as to what species they are and invariably find my guess is wrong. Tim is very generous in tasking the time to respond to people like me, and his help is always appreciated.As for the book, it would be of great value to anybody remotely interested in spiders. It is especially readable when addressing general groups of spiders, and much less so when discussing the taxonomy of spiders when at least this reader is overwhelmed by the vocabulary used to describe the spider's anatomy. The book includes a glossary, so in most cases you can discover the meaning of the word. My memory is encased in a body over three-quarters of a century old, so what I learn has only a brief stay there before it is gone to make way for another, soon to be forgotten, bit of knowledge.I own both the paperbound and the Kindle version of the spider book. I have a Mac desktop and it is here I really appreciate the Kindle version as you can type in, say a genus name, and immediately be presented with a listing showing you everyplace in the book where the term is used, and go to that part of the book by clicking on the extracted portion of the text. I also have a "Paperwhite" Kindle so I can take the Guide with me when I go out to photograph odonates or arachnids.Tim Has written a guide for the California Natural History Guide series on butterflies. Unfortunately this is not available in a Kindle format. For the reasons noted above, I think past books of this series should be made available in the Kindle format.So for spider lovers, especially those living in California, this book is a must.

This is a small yet hefty book with 300 text pages and 70 pages of plates containing 400+ color illustrations of California spiders. I found the text to be up to date, informative and with good references should you wish to take things further. It also seems to cover all the spider families found in California which is an achievement in itself.The use of illustrations rather than photographs has pros and cons. Comparing it with similar guides based on photographs (~350 photos in A Guide to Spiders of Britain and Northern Europe by D. Jones or ~200 photos in Spiders of the Eastern United States by Howell and Jenkins), my feeling is that photographs usually make for better identification. Having said that, when checking against the spiders I know well I can say that the illustrations would enable accurate identification (and bugguide.com or nathistoc.bio.uci.edu/spiders/index.htm can always be viewed as a photographic supplement/confirmation).The only illustration I found surprising was the egg sac of H. pluchei in plate 9. I observed marbled cellar spiders around the outside of our house for several years and never saw the egg sac in the nursery web in the way illustrated. In fact I only observed it released by the female temporarily for feeding or mating. I guess I question why such an unusual event was illustrated rather than the normal holding of the egg sac by the chelicerae. It would be helpful to have a bit more background about how the illustrations were made: were fresh specimens always used, how many of the species were observed in their wild habitat by the authors, and so on?With the exception of the widows and a few others, all the spiders are given more or less equal coverage. My preference would be that the commonly seen spiders always be illustrated and and given a more detailed description. For example several Theridions are illustrated but not T. melanarum which is most often observed, being almost ubiquitous on door and window frames. It might enhance the usefulness of the book to include photographs next to the main text for the 30 or so most common CA spiders. One simple way to determine what is "common" is to count the number of submissions it has from California in bugguide. All the above are relatively minor quibles: overall I rate this an above average field guide - and it is the only guide specifically about our California spiders.

I just received my copy of Richard J. Adams "Field Guide to the Spiders of California and the Pacific States" and was most pleased with it. The color illustrations by Tim D. Manolis are alone worth the investment in buying the book. It joins books on North American spiders and ants, and California dragonflies and damselflies, as well as bees, published over the last few years by the University of California Press. All of these are excellent works. The current guide for California and the Pacific states is probable the best modern regional guide to spiders that I have seen. While final identification of most spiders requires examination of the sexual anatomy with a binocular microscope, this guide will probably get most specimens to the families and genera covered, with some help from a hand lens. The coverage is remarkable and includes all of the families known from the area covered.I do not know the author but have had correspondence with the illustrator. I was pleased to find three species that I described and named (two as sole author and one with Rick Vetter of the University of California-Riverside) discussed and illustrated. All three are recognizable from the excellent illustrations. A number of other species with which I am familiar were also easily recognized. I only wish such guide books had been available to me when I started out in arachnology.I recommend this book for anyone interested in the spider fauna of the Pacific Coast, and indeed it should serve fairly well in much of the western U.S.

I would have liked a Key to the families of the Spiders. Hence, only 4 stars. Otherwise it is an excellent field guide, but does require some knowledge of the areas spider fauna.