Millions of Monarchs, Bunches of Beetles: How Bugs Find Strength in Numbers - Hardcover

Waldbauer, Gilbert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674000900 ISBN 13: 9780674000902

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Insects that are the least bit social may gather in modest groups, like the dozen or so sawfly larvae feeding on a pine needle, or they may form huge masses, like a swarm of migratory locusts in Africa or a cloud of mayflies at the edge of a midwestern lake or river. Why these insects get together and what they get out of their associations are questions finely and fully considered in this learned and entertaining look at the group behavior and social lives of a wide array of bugs.

The groups that Gilbert Waldbauer discusses here are not as complex or tightly organized as the better-known societies of termites, wasps, ants, and bees. Some, like the mayflies, come together merely because they emerge from the water in the same place at the same time. But others, like swarms of locusts, are loosely organized, the individual insects congregating to migrate together for distances of hundreds of miles. And yet others form a simple cooperative society, such as the colony of tent caterpillars that weaves a silken tent to house the whole group.

Waldbauer tells us how individuals in these and other insect aggregations communicate (or don't), how they coordinate their efforts, how some congregate the better to mate, how some groups improve the temperature and humidity of their microenvironment, and how others safeguard themselves (or the future of their kind) by amassing in such vast numbers as to confound predators.

As engaging and authoritative as Waldbauer's previous books, Millions of Monarchs, Bunches of Beetles will enlighten and delight those who know their insects well and those who wish to know them better.

About this title

About the Author

Gilbert Waldbauer is Professor Emeritus of Entomology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Reviews

In a witty and informative look at insect sociology, Waldbauer (The Birder's Bug Book), University of Illinois emeritus professor of entomology, examines many of the reasons that insects form groups. The groups may be as small as a handful of sawfly larvae feeding together on a single needle of a jack pine, or as large as millions of monarch butterflies huddled together on cypress trees to protect themselves from the elements. Or they may be as ephemeral as the swarms of mayflies looking for mates during their 24-hour adult lives, or as long-lived as populations of billions of locusts eating their way across Africa. Insects come together for a host of reasons, Waldbauer explains: to find mates, to avoid predators, to enhance their food-gathering abilities, to manipulate their environment and to subdue prey. In each case, Waldbauer provides evocative descriptions of particular species' behaviors while discussing the underlying evolutionary reasons for that behavior. In summarizing hundreds of scientists' research, Waldbauer finds a sensitive balance between being overly technical and simplistic. His sheer love of insects is so obvious and infectious that even entomophobes are likely to get caught up in his excitement. 14 line illus. not seen by PW. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Each chapter neatly forecasts the subject of the next, betraying this book's possible origins as instructional lectures. Every chapter is, however, so full of fascination, so well conveyed in clear, congenial, and precise prose, that many readers may want to audit professor Waldbauer's next course. The overall topic is occasionally social insects: how and why do they get together when they do? Their reasons include finding mates, species self-defense, subduing prey, going where the food is, and even controlling their own microclimates--that's why tent caterpillars make tents. Waldbauer unfolds all this buggy cooperation in absorbing accounts of particular species: monarch butterflies, ladybugs, locusts, corn rootworms, etc. What a relief to learn that the Rocky Mountain locusts, the legendary sky-darkening swarmers that devoured every plant in their path, are probably extinct, and what a smug, modern pleasure to read about those other swarmers, people, and the silly religious things they used to do to try to get rid of insect hordes. However, those aren't the only satisfactions the book affords. Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674000900
• ISBN 13: 9780674000902
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272