SARAPIQUI CHRONICLE : A NATURALIST IN COSTA RICA

Young combines elements of autobiography, natural science, and travel, recounting his many trips to the jungles of Costa Rica. An insect ecologist, he focuses on the insect life teeming in the northeastern rainforests. Includes b&w photographs. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Young, a curator at the Milwaukee Public Museum, brings the trained eye of an entomologist and an unabashed admiration for the beauty of nature to this engaging and informative account of his experiences during 21 years of field work in Costa Rica's rain forests. Much of the text is devoted to his study of the butterfly Morpho peleides , with additional observations on other insects, such as cicadas and zebra butterflies. All is enthusiastically described in accessible, informal prose, whether it's the discovery of a butterfly roost, speculation on how the "drip tips" on leaves benefit the forest, a hunt for cast-off cicada skins, a review of published findings on orchid pollination, or even a visit to a Costa Rican market to dig through bananas for the smelliest, most rotted fruit for butterfly food. Young also records the area's rapid deforestation, as he surveys a sun-scorched red clay landscape, recalling that "this was once a sacred place where I walked under a succulent canopy of life." Photos not seen by PW .
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The verdant rain forests of Costa Rica have enticed generations of adversity-defying naturalists to explore their depths and discover the secrets of their exotic plants and animals. Young offers an enthusiastic, although somewhat rambling, account of his 20 years of field studies in northeastern Costa Rica. We enter the fascinating lives of butterflies, tropical cicadas, and orchid bees, which he has studied, and meet a wealth of other creatures along the way. While Young's narrative suffers from scattered inaccuracies and a lack of references, it is nonetheless rewarding and succeeds well in conveying both the excitement of field work and the intricate nature of plant and animal interactions in space and in time. Young makes it clear that forest systems must be preserved in their entirety; sparing small isolated tracts will not be enough. For natural history collections.
- Annette Aiello, Smithsonian Tropical Research
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.