Introduction

The background and history regarding the development of the original published IRRI key to rice insect pests and their natural enemies, and the subsequent development of a single online key involving 862 insect and spider species, is provided here.

Subsequently, since potential users of such a key are likely to range from those with limited to considerable familiarity with the taxonomy of rice insects and spiders, the original online key has now been re-published as a set of 13 keys. For those not familiar with insect taxonomy, a short key to insect and spider orders has been developed. This allows them to determine the order to which a specific insect/spider belongs and to then open a key to species within that order. More experienced users, likely to know the order to which a specific specimen belongs, can go directly to a key to that order.