An accessible but comprehensive overview of beetles, illustrated with 4,500 photographs.
Thousands of photos, almost.
Part two of Beetles is a guided tour of the Diversity of the order, with fascinating stops for all of the world\'s 180 or so families of beetles as well as most of the significant subfamilies.
Part one of the book includes: Life Histories of Beetles: Form and Function: Eggs
Larvae
Pupae, Prepupae and Cocoons
Adults
Courtship and Mating Behaviors Defense and Deception: Tanks, Tricks and Coleopteran
Chemical Warfare
Brilliance and Bioluminescence in the Beetles Freshwater and Marine Beetles: Freshwater beetles
Marine beetles Beetle Associations with Fungi, Dung and Carrion: Beetles and Fungi
Beetles and Dung
Beetles and Dead Bodies Beetles, Plants and Plant Products: Beetles and Flowers
Phytophagy and Beetle Diversity
Aposematic Beetles and Their Plant Hosts
Beetles as Agricultural and Garden Pests
Beetles and Biological Control of Weeds
Beetles and Trees Beetles and Other Animals: Dangerous Beetles
Coleoptera and Culture
Beetles Indoors
Rare, Endangered and Threatened Beetles
Beetles, Birds and Wild Mammals
Beetles and Other Invertebrates.
Marshall opens with a description of what makes a beetle a beetle, and then introduces the Natural History of the order with copious examples and explanations.
The subject of this book is an enormous one, since the beetles, or Coleoptera, include almost 400,000 named species.
Comprehensive and packed with 27 pages of richly illustrated keys and 4,500 color illustrations, it provides the reader with a colorful and enjoyable introduction to the Natural History of a huge group of organisms, along with an overview of the Diversity of fascinating families included in the group.
In Beetles: The Natural History and Diversity of Coleoptera, Marshall has again applied his deep knowledge of the insect world.
The books have been adopted as classroom texts and assigned as required reading at the university level and are on the references shelves of many practicing entomologists.
More admirable than the books\' rigorous science, however, is that they are wholly suitable for a lay audience, including student readers from high school on.
Among Stephen Marshall\'s many other Natural History titles are Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity and Flies: The Natural History and Diversity of Diptera, two of the most respected books on the insect world published in the last 20 years.
An accessible but comprehensive overview of beetles, illustrated with 4,500 photographs
