Planet of the Bugs: Evolution and the Rise of Insects

Planet of the Bugs: Evolution and the Rise of Insects Scott R. Shaw 2014; 256 pages, 12 color plates University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL ISBN-13: 978-0-226-16361-1 $27.50 (hardcover); $17.00 (softcover)![Graphic][1] This entertainingly written and fascinating book introduces insect evolution for a general audience. Shaw inserts many other aspects of insect diversity and biology in the process, and editorializes about priorities in science and how much we still don't know about insect diversity. He brings in accounts of his own Neotropical fieldwork and paleontological features from his Wyoming environs, giving the book an engaging personal flavor. The book is well illustrated with photographs of living and fossil insects, and the thirteen pages of footnotes at the back make interesting reading in themselves.After an introductory chapter presenting the basics of insect biology, diversity, and evolution, Shaw gives a nine-chapter tour of the geologic periods relevant to arthropod and insect evolution. He keeps this 500-million-year history surprisingly lively, animating two-dimensional fossil arthropods into fascinating creatures that interacted with their environment, each other, and even dinosaurs. He launches his treatment in the Cambrian and Ordovician, with the rise of the arthropods within the early explosion of animal body plans. In … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif