Customer Reviews

Evolution of the Insects (Cambridge Evolution Series)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I read "History of Insects" by Rasnitsyn & Quicke, I was happy, when I read "Evolution of the Insects" I became ecstatic! This book has colorful, well chosen illustrations that illuminate the chapters. The book is well written to the point of being hard to put down.

The authors have included much about living insects which will make this accessible volume useful to biologists as well as paleontologists. Teachers and libraries ought to have this book.
Fossil collectors and naturalists will be drawn to it.

The price of this hardbound treasure is low enough to be irresistable. To be sure, there are some errors; all chert is not volcanic(P. 49), and the 'spider' in photo 2.4 on P. 45 is actually the Holotype of a whip scorpion relative called a Schizomid. The authors accept impact for the Triassic mass extinction which is still debated, while curiously balking to accept the widely acknowledged impact termination to the Cretaceous.

All in all, this is a MUST HAVE book. I still love the more technical "History of Insects" for its many illustrations of Asian fossils which are seldom seen in
English language publications.

"Evolution of the Insects" is perhaps the finest treatment yet given to any fossil group!

Every so often a breakthrough book is published afterwhich everything that follows will be different. This is one of those books. This is the most complete, the most detailed and easily the best illustrated book on insect evolution ever even attempted.

The cover photograph (a 120 million year old orthopteran of the extinct family Elcanidae) sets the tone. This photograph is as complete and beautifully made as if it were taken yesterday of a living insect. And this is only one outstanding picture. Altogether there are 995 photographs and illustrations in the book, the majority of which are in color.

Extensively researched, there are some 70 pages (large size pages) of references. Every aspect of insect evolution is at least touched upon from the history of the prominent scientists to the insects themselves as they began, developed wings and other distinguishing features, evolved to the forms we see today.

This is the definitive book on the subject.

Entymologists may have a take on this that I don't, being a mere natural history buff. I actually read the first 250 pages straight through (in bed - no mean trick with this 10 pound item), then browsed the rest for information, returning to steady reading at the end. The beginning chapters give a history of insect studies and go at some questions of general interest (what was the evolutionary history of the development of insect wings, for example... fascinating stuff). The final chapters deal with general questions of modern insect history and the future in our increasingly screwed up planet. Both the beginning and end of the book could be read usefully as essays in themselves. The great middle bulk deals with the evolution of the particular families and orders, and is,again, full of interesting details (no, the modern roach doesn't go back to the Carboniferous, no matter what they say in the Exterminex commercial!)

So the technical (but perfectly clear) middle five hundred pages becomes for me a once-scanned part of my reference library to which I'm sure I'll be returning many times. For me, not being a trained biologist, one good feature of the book is that I got a - hopefully partially retainable - idea of the various ages and epochs in geological time (how many times have I tried to get those down?) and a general notion of the various features of groups of insects and their relationships to one another. I think it's much easier to retain this information in the framework of evolutionary history than from a field guide or books on specific groups. But ask me again in a year. Of course, the book is very well illustrated and generously sprinkled with graphs and timelines.

This book was a textbook for a course on insect fossils I took a few years ago and we read it cover to cover. My fellow classmates and I (all professional entomologists) had mixed reviews of this book. While it undoutedly provides a lot of good information and is a tremendous contribution to the field of insect fossils, it also contains several mistakes and leaves out a lot of important information. For example, the professor for my fossil insect course is one of the world's experts on giant water bug fossils and was appalled to see what was clearly a giant water bug fossil, from a formation in Germany he has studied himself, labeled as a naucorid, a completely different insect. A description of a dryopid beetle fossil on another page said that all stages of dryopids are aquatic when the larvae are terrestrial. My classmates and I found several such errata throughout the book and felt they seriously undermined the reliability of the information it contains. We were also all annoyed by the lack of molecular support for the arguments presented by the authors. While morphological data is certainly important to consider in systematic studies, it is blatently obvious that the authors don't think much of molecular phylogenetic data. This is unfortunate because in several cases, molecular data has cleared up long standing controversies over taxnomic deliniations where morphological data alone could not. It is clear from the text that the authors are more comfortable with the morphological data than molecular (as expected - they're experts on insect fossils), which would be fine if the book was called Insect Paleontology. However, this book is called Evolution of the Insects. Molecular data is a huge part of modern insect systematics and phylogenetics and any book purporting to canvas the subject of insect evolution should take advantage of the entire wealth of knowledge available and report on it all. That said, this book does what few other books does: it contains information on both extant and extinct linages and it covers the groups we know only through fossils as thoroughly as it does the living taxa. For me, that information alone makes this book worth reading, and is the reason I give it 3 stars insted of 2.

What organism has a loss of musculature in the antenna beyond the scape, possesses the Johnston's Organ, and for females the presence of an ovipositor formed by gonapophyses? The answer is an organism that seems to have the favor of evolutionary pressures for over 400 million years which has produced about 5,000, 000 species of insects that are alive today. The authors of this book estimate that perhaps 100 million species have existed at various points in this evolutionary timescale. Even if you are not an entomophile, even if you were never tempted to create a butterfly collection, and even if bee and ant stings, pesky cockroaches, and devastating grasshoppers cause you to believe that humans are better off without insects, this literary and scientific masterpiece will give you a deep appreciation for how the most successful life forms on the planet have evolved over the past 400 million years. Written for the professional entomologist and serious students of entomology, with some perseverance and discipline, along with a sizeable block in time, any reader who is interested in the subject matter can gain immensely from a reading of this book. Everything about insects is fascinating, and one could spend a lifetime for example just studying the evolution of one particular order of insects. For readers (such as this reviewer) who are not experts in entomology it is helpful to photocopy the glossary while reading the book, in order to have the important terminology readily available without having to constantly flip to the back of the book. There are hundreds of facts in the book that are fascinating and surprising. A small sampling of these include:
- The sociality of certain species of insects, such as bees, termites, and ants, does not by itself explain ecological dominance. The exact species and the size of the colonies must be taken into consideration also.
- Since the book addresses is about evolution, the authors address the theory of evolution in general and the biological mechanisms used in adaptation and change. The authors speak of insects as being the most diverse group of organisms in history. But how does one actually measure diversity and "evolutionary success" of a group of organisms? The authors list a few criteria for doing so: the longevity of lineage; the degree of diversity in adaptations; the biomass; the ecological impact. One can measure diversity by counting the number of species, and by observing the variety of structures and behaviors that allows insects to adapt to the environment.
- The high oxygen content of the atmosphere during the Permian period allowed the flight of gigantic insects, the griffenflies, which represent the largest insects that have ever lived. The Meganluropsis permiana had an amazing wingspan of almost 28 inches.
- Even though insects do not leave behind skeletons of bone when they perish, they have left behind an impressive fossil record in amber and other media such as carbon, silica, and tar.
- Insects are also masters of mimicry and camouflage. There are ample photos in the book that illustrate this.
- The insects are masters at being crop pests and spreading disease, and the authors point out that every plant species has at least one insect species that feeds on it. However, in spite of the major annoyance of insects to humans sometimes, to take away ants, bees, and termites the authors say would result in the possible extinction of all terrestrial life.
- Two species of insects, namely Apis mellifera (honey bee) and Drosophila melanogaster (fruitfly) have been the most intensely investigated life forms on Earth.
- For readers with a background in bioinformatics/molecular biology, the author discuss various methodologies for phylogeny reconstruction, such as likelihood models and Bayesian belief networks.
- "Popular culture" and Hollywood have played up the possibility of DNA preservation in amber. The authors give an explicit example where this has accomplished, namely a fragment of a chloroplast gene of 770 base pairs long from an extinct tree Magnolia latahensis.
- The `cryptobiotic' state that some organisms, the tarigrades, can be in, allowing survival through extreme conditions such as temperatures above the boiling point of water or high intensity X-rays.
- The origin of insect flight and geometry and anatomy of the insect wing, which contain flexion lines that allow the generation of vortices. Insects were the first organisms to fly, and with flight came sophisticated nervous systems. Insects could then learn, and as the case of the honeybee shows, impressively so.
- Mammalian evolution was coupled with that of insects as expected, with a good example being the evolution of the phthirapterons (lice).
- The coleopterans, the beetles, and given wide discussion in the book. The tiger beetle is the fast running insect and some beetles can spray an adversary with a hot mixture of water, oxygen, and quinones. The catharoid beetles and their bioluminescent ability is given detailed discussion. The genes utilized in bioluminescence have been inserted as transgenes in some organisms to study their metabolic activity. The authors discuss in some depth the evolutionary advantages of bioluminescence.

The list goes on, and the authors encourage the reader at the end of the book to further their studies of entomology and give warning to the importance of the preservation of insects, even though their resilience through time is unequaled. The extinction of insects by human destruction of habitat is a reality that must be dealt with, and the elimination of certain species of insects would be catastrophic for most of the lifeforms on the planet (the termites being the best example). Insects have thus been friend and foe to humankind, but through the techniques of genetic engineering the impact to humans of the foes can be diminished (such as malaria in mosquitoes). It is quite possible that the evolution of insects can be accelerated using these techniques, but if not one can still be confident that evolution will, to paraphrase the biologist G.E. Hutchinson, continue to have an inordinate fondness for insects.

Evolution of the Insects is not a light read. It could be the textbook for a graduate course in Entomology, but if you are fascinated by insects and you want to use some of your gray cells, this book is for you! The authors present the latest views on insect evolution based on fossil evidence, anatomical studies of modern insects and molecular evidence as well. The images of fossil insects and phylogenetic trees are remarkable. I am enjoying and learning something new on every page.

It is difficult to understand how such an extraordinary book can be published for such a good price. The production values for this volume put to shame nearly every other book on evolutionary history I own. It is hard to imagine how the authors secured this level of support for publishing a relatively narrow-interest book. I assume significant grants must have been involved.

I can only hope that future books by different authors on the evolutionary history of different organisms (chordates, molluscs, etc.) will be afforded this level of support.

An excellent review ot the evolution of insects, with numerous line drawings and photographs. Well written and comprehensive. This book is not for casual reading, but would be indespensible for persons with a serious interest in the evolution of insects. The size of the book is quite large.

An absolute must for entomologists, and for the price, an absolute must for anyone remotely interested in the topic of evolution.

The illustrations are stunning.

The writing is judicious and comprehensive, but never tedious or stale.

The citations are comprehensive and up-to-date, and the discussion based on them synthesizes the views of naturalists, entomologists, paleontologists, biologists, and systematists, but without ever burying important contemporary controversies.

The authors are active researchers, who somehow found the time to put this gorgeous volume together for the rest of us while pursuing their own fresh interests.

You need not be a professional to read, enjoy, and benefit from this volume. Any intelligent layperson with an abiding interest in science and the deep evo-devo connections between ourselves and this most successful animal group will gain enrichment and goggle at the photos, paintings, charts, and other graphic content. Recent fossil discoveries are particularly well discussed and displayed, but the graphics are superb overall--the illustrations of grasshopper dentition are alone worth the price of admission!

Really, what more could you want?

Any tome of this size and production quality is bound to be pricey. But there are solutions to that--encourage your local public library system to obtain a copy, or indulge in a "guest researcher" membership at your nearest university library, or simply grit your teeth and get a copy now.

Because you know volumes like these don't stay in print forever, and are not the kind that diminish greatly in price over any reasonably near term.