Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions, and Other Many-Legged Creatures [Hardcover]

Thomas Eisner (Author), Maria Eisner (Author), Melody Siegler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2005

Mostly tiny, infinitely delicate, and short-lived, insects and their relatives--arthropods--nonetheless outnumber all their fellow creatures on earth. How lowly arthropods achieved this unlikely preeminence is a story deftly and colorfully told in this follow-up to the award-winning For Love of Insects. Part handbook, part field guide, part photo album, Secret Weapons chronicles the diverse and often astonishing defensive strategies that have allowed insects, spiders, scorpions, and other many-legged creatures not just to survive, but to thrive.

In sixty-nine chapters, each brilliantly illustrated with photographs culled from Thomas Eisner's legendary collection, we meet a largely North American cast of arthropods--as well as a few of their kin from Australia, Europe, and Asia--and observe at firsthand the nature and extent of the defenses that lie at the root of their evolutionary success. Here are the cockroaches and termites, the carpenter ants and honeybees, and all the miniature creatures in between, deploying their sprays and venom, froth and feces, camouflage and sticky coatings. And along with a marvelous bug's-eye view of how these secret weapons actually work, here is a close-up look at the science behind them, from taxonomy to chemical formulas, as well as an appendix with instructions for studying chemical defenses at home. Whether dipped into here and there or read cover to cover, Secret Weapons will prove invaluable to hands-on researchers and amateur naturalists alike, and will captivate any reader for whom nature is a source of wonder.

(20051001)

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

"Defense is at the root of the evolutionary success of arthropods." And what a panoply of defenses they display. The authors—Thomas Eisner is J. G. Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell University; his wife, Maria Eisner, a research associate of biology at Cornell; and Melody Siegler, an associate professor of biology at Emory University—present 69 examples. They range from Mastigoproctus giganteus (the vinegaroon, which ejects a spray with an acetic acid content of 84 percent when it is physically disturbed) to Apis mellifera (the honeybee, whose stinger produces a chemically complex venom made up of about half mellitin, which is largely responsible for the pain associated with a bee sting). Yet with all that is known on this subject, much must remain to be discovered because millions of arthropod species are thought to be undiscovered. "Think of what this means," the authors say, "in terms of biological wonders lying in wait, in terms of new bugs and bug adaptations awaiting discovery."

Editors of Scientific American

From Booklist

The arthropods--those multilegged, lowly denizens of the planet that most of us would probably like to forget--are masters at the art of defense. Outnumbering all of the other animals put together, the arthropods have survived through their mastery of a multitude of chemical weapons. In their fascinating new book, the authors, all of whom study the defensive strategies of arthropods (insects, scorpions, centipedes, etc.), provide an overview of their different methods of chemical defense. The book is divided into short chapters, each of which tells the story of one species or group of related species. Color photographs, mostly from Eisner's collection, illustrate each chapter, and the chemical formulae for each species' defensive substance is provided. A list of the major references from the scientific literature appends each chapter. This unique guide to froth, venom, sprays, sticky coatings, and so forth will satisfy both the casual reader and the serious student and is a very worthy addition to any natural history collection. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press (November 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674018826
• ISBN-13: 978-0674018822
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #864,828 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lavishly illustrated; thoroughly professional, August 4, 2006

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Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions, and Other Many-Legged Creatures (Hardcover)

The "weapons" in the title are mostly chemical. They are poisons that insects and their kin use to protect themselves from predators. Spiders, insects, snakes and other animals use poisons to subdue their victims as part of their preying arsenal, but what the authors focus on in this unusual book are chemicals used by "many-legged creatures" as defensive weapons. Pick up certain beetles or fly larvae or especially some grasshoppers and caterpillars and they will vomit noxious stuff on you. It will smell bad, it may contain harmful bacteria, and it will be "spiked" with deterrent chemicals stemming from plants eaten by the insect.

Or the insect may defecate on you. Imagine that you are the size of the insect, one of its predators. Imagine the effect of copious amounts of feces coming at you. The authors show how these defenses actually work on predators like wolf spiders and even small rodents. I was especially struck by how often these defenses apparently evolved as defenses against ants.

Of course many insects spit, spray, sting, and bite in response to being disturb or threatened. This is how they deliver their noxious chemicals, their poisons, their foul-smelling stuff, their stuff that stings, debilitates and even kills. Eisner, Eisner and Siegler give numerous disquieting examples of exactly how this is done in 69 very creepy chapters. Each chapter is dedicated to a particular creature or Family of creatures from vinegaroons (Chapter 1) through bombardier beetles (Chapter 35) to the honey bee (Chapter 69). Millipedes, cockroaches, ants, aphids, termites and many others make their gruesome appearance.

Gruesome...? Well, it's all in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. The many photos of the creatures that accompany the text are arguably beautiful. With some detachment I can see the earwig (Doru taeniatum) shown in all its black and brown and tan glory on page 77 as quite attractive. (However the beauty of the photo of the cockroach with its egg case hanging out the back on page 59 is a bit beyond my ability to fully appreciate.)

Nonetheless I realize that people who collect and study insects do find them attractive, and properly seen they are as beautiful as...well, Penelope Cruz. Insects are marvelous beings with the most amazing talents, their abilities well beyond that of modern science to emulate. Would that we could build robots with the ability of the ant! Still I must say that for many readers this book could prove an unsettling experience. But in truth the photos are amazing. They are brilliantly colored and sharply focused, showing the creatures in various poses, eating, mating, being eaten, fighting, secreting, guarding eggs, etc. And there are some very nice shots taken through microscopes that reveal wondrous detail.

Clearly "Secret Weapons" is a book for enthusiasts and professionals. Not only are the scientific names given for each creature along with the common names, the authors also give schematic drawings of the elemental composition of each of the chemicals used by the many-legged creatures! Furthermore there is a chapter on "How to Study Insects and Their Kin" in which the kinds of equipment (plastic bags, forceps, nets, vials, hand lenses, scalpels, petri dishes, insect pins, etc.) used by professionals are not only listed and described but presented in color photos. Each chapter concludes with scientific journal and book references for further study.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Wars of the Multilegged, July 8, 2006

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R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions, and Other Many-Legged Creatures (Hardcover)

Even if you live in the city, you probably encounter insects or spiders every day. Such animals are enormously successful almost anywhere you go, except for marine environments. There are many reasons for their success, but in _Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions, and Other Many-Legged Creatures_ (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), the concentration is on defensive strategies, diverse and strange. The authors, Thomas Eisner, Maria Eisner, and Melody Siegler, are biologists with a mission, to show largely in photographs some of the defenses, especially chemicals but also mechanical measures, mimicry, camouflage, and warning colors. The authors say this is the first photographic introduction to the defenses of arthropods, and it is a book of wonders. It consists of 69 short chapters, each featuring one arthropod and concentrating on a particular method of defense. There are "sprays, oozes, sticky coatings, ... enteric fluids, feces, or systemic toxins." Some insects produce their chemical defenses as part of their physiology, but others grab toxins from the outside and eat them or smear them on themselves to get protection. The toxic or irritant chemicals are shown here in diagram form. The degree of sophistication of defenses among these most humble of creatures must incite any reader's admiration.

There is one surprising tactic after another on these pages. It is amazing, for instance, that any creature is able to use hydrogen cyanide as a weapon; cyanide is an almost universal poison, blocking the chemical cycles of oxidation. Soil centipedes, however, have pores along the body that secrete a sticky substance with cyanide in it. The cyanide forms outside the centipede's body where precursor molecules meet after being ejected. There is a picture shown of a centipede maternally guarding her eggs, ready to launch a cyanide attack on any ant or spider of which they are the natural prey. Acetic acid is familiar as the sour flavor in vinegar. The arachnid named the "vinegaroon" is so called due to the acetic acid in its spray. Vinegar has only a few percent acetic acid, and the vinegaroon's spray has 84%, the highest concentration in nature. Not all the defenses here are chemical; some are mechanical. The bristle millipede looks like a bottle brush. The tufts at the rear of the millipede are actually bunches of hairs with tiny grappling hooks on them. If an ant attacks the millipede, it touches a tuft to the ant, and the hooks attach to hairs on the ant's body. There are barbs on the shaft of the hook as well, and so the millipede's hairs interconnect, immobilizing the ant in a network of locked hairs; when the ant tries to clean itself, it only gets more tangled. Green lacewings lay their eggs on stalks to protect them, and on the stalk leave droplets of oil that repel ants. Once the egg hatches, however, the larva itself can ingest the oil on the way down. Lubber grasshoppers vomit copiously when attacked, and seem to eat noxious food just to make sure the point gets across. Tortoise beetles contract themselves into an almost perfect hemisphere with no folds or cracks on which a predator might make purchase; they also use an intricate system of oil and bristles on their feet that adhere them to a surface so strongly that no attacker can take them away. The larva of another tortoise beetle has a special fork extending up from its tail; it is a feces fork on which the larva hangs, well, feces, and it keeps the feces even in successive molts. The feces form a shield that can be rotated for protection against ants and spiders. Bombardier beetles spray their toxins at the temperature of boiling water; some spiders know to wrap and entangle the beetle gently without causing the discharge, and only to bite down when the rear end is completely enveloped. Sophisticated tactics and counter-tactics seem to be deployed in an ever-increasing cycle. _Secret Weapons_ is beautifully illustrated, and provides hundreds of astounding instances of the baroque lengths to which evolution has driven chemistry, morphology, and behavior.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Photo-log and Chemical-Defense Attributes of Insects, April 23, 2007

By 

Bugs "Patrick" (Los Angeles, Ca.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions, and Other Many-Legged Creatures (Hardcover)

This book has beautiful color photos (note the front cover for an example) of a good array of mostly North America insects along with their taxonomic order and common names and with brief explanations of their ecology and specific defense mechanisms coupled with detailed chemical analysis.

The book finishes with photos and explanations of essential insect collecting gear and lab analysis equipment.

Over-all, I was struck with the incredible dynamics of insect defenses and how researchers are finding ways to harness these chemicals for a host of products such as medicines, bug repellents, plant defenses, etc. Medical researchers, biochemists and laymen alike, should find this information most helpful and interesting.