Bug
Books
(This 884th Buffalo Sunday News column was first published on March 2, 2008.)
Two Outstanding Books
on Insects
I
suppose you could call them bug books, but that informal designation would
hardly do for two of the finest entomological publications I have come across
in my lifetime association with natural history. That they were both published
within the past year is quite remarkable.
The
first is "Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity" by Stephen
Marshall, professor of entomology at the University of Guelph in nearby
Ontario. This is a huge book -- lifting it can serve as a day's exercise. Its
732 pages include over 4000 color insect photographs. Clearly this represents
the life work of a fine scientist.
The
other is the Kaufman series "Field Guide to Insects of North America"
by Eric Eaton and Kenn Kaufman. It has now replaced my well worn copy of Borrer
and White's "Insects of North America North of Mexico" of the
Peterson series.
But
let's back up a bit. Just what are these insects that Marshall and Eaton are
summarizing here.
Scientists have described and given scientific names to over
900,000 species of insects in the world, which represents almost 85% of all
known animal species. For comparison, only about 4,000 of the known animal
species are mammals, man being one of these. Remarkably those known insect
species are still a drop in the bucket: it is estimated that millions of
insects are yet to be described. About 2000 new ones are identified each year.
And consider individual insects. A North Carolina study found
approximately 124 million per acre and a similar study in Pennsylvania yielded
figures of 425 million per acre. Even taking the smaller of those numbers, we
find that there are 12 times as many insects per square mile than the world
population of humans.
So there are a lot of insects out there.
And they are important. We need them to pollinate our field crops
and orchards. Kaufman lists other values, among them: "Pomace flies and
flour beetles are valuable research subjects in the field of genetics. Blow
flies help forensic scientists solve homicides. Some are employed to control invasive
weeds. Chemical compounds produced by insects are increasingly useful in
medicine and other fields." Others produce "beeswax, silk, honey,
dyes and shellac."
But there are bad ones as well. Marshall tells us how some of them
"bite, carry diseases, cost us billions of dollars every year in crop
losses and lead us to contaminate our environment with a frightening variety of
toxic chemicals in our attempts to get the better of them. Insect-borne
diseases, like plague and typhus, have periodically wiped out sizable portions
of the Earth's human population, and have repeatedly turned the tides of war by
killing far more people than guns and swords. Even today half the world's
population is at risk from mosquito-borne malaria, and another 90 million people
in 76 countries suffer from insect-borne filariasis. Chagas' disease, caused by
a bug-borne protozoan, affects another 16 to 18 million people and countless
millions are affected daily by fly-borne food and water contamination."
Just here in North America there are 90,000 already named insect
species. How then can a field guide or even Marshall's big book hope to
identify them all? Quite simply, they cannot. Others devote entire books to
identification of one sub-family like ants and it takes trained entomologists
to identify many individual insects. Instead Eaton and Marshal help us to
decide their order -- like beetles, butterflies and moths, true bugs -- and
family -- lady beetles, tiger moths, stink bugs. Then they suggest some of the
common genera and species within those ranks.
Eaton helps the user with a brief introductory color key but
Marshall provides a quite remarkable 52 page pictorial key. Thus I can get a
general idea of an insect in the field with Eaton and if I capture it I can use
Marshall's key to zero in still further.
Entomology is an extremely important and equally interesting field
with a wide range of employment opportunities. Many of the entomologists I know
started as youngsters collecting insects. That activity has unfortunately been
discouraged, but now with digital cameras youngsters can approach this subject
in a new way. With books like these they have the basis for such activities and
I urge every library to make them available.-- Gerry
Rising