A Philosophy of the Insect

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231540728
Total Pages : 177 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis A Philosophy of the Insect by : Jean-Marc Drouin

Download or read book A Philosophy of the Insect written by Jean-Marc Drouin and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world of insects is at once beneath our feet and unfathomably alien. Small and innumerable, insects surround and disrupt us even as we scarcely pay them any mind. Insects confront us with the limits of what is imaginable, while at the same time being essential to the everyday functioning of all terrestrial ecosystems. In this book, the philosopher and historian of science Jean-Marc Drouin contends that insects pose a fundamental challenge to philosophy. Exploring the questions of what insects are and what scientific, aesthetic, ethical, and historical relationships they have with humanity, he argues that they force us to reconsider our ideas of the animal and the social. He traces the role that insects have played in language, mythology, literature, entomology, sociobiology, and taxonomy over the centuries. Drouin emphasizes the links between humanistic and scientific approaches—how we have projected human roles onto insects and seen ourselves in insect form. Caught between the animal and plant kingdoms, insects force us to confront and reevaluate our notions of gender, family, society, struggle, the division of labor, social organization, and individual and collective intelligence. A remarkably original and thought-provoking work, A Philosophy of the Insect is an important book for animal studies, environmental ethics, and the history and philosophy of science.

Insect Media

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Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 081666739X
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (166 download)

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Book Synopsis Insect Media by : Jussi Parikka

Download or read book Insect Media written by Jussi Parikka and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the early nineteenth century, when entomologists first popularized the unique biological and behavioral characteristics of insects, technological innovators and theorists have proposed insects as templates for a wide range of technologies. In Insect Media, Jussi Parikka analyzes how insect forms of social organization-swarms, hives, webs, and distributed intelligence-have been used to structure modern media technologies and the network society, providing a radical new perspective on the interconnection of biology and technology. Through close engagement with the pioneering work of insect ethologists, including Jakob von Uexküll and Karl von Frisch, posthumanist philosophers, media theorists, and contemporary filmmakers and artists, Parikka develops an insect theory of media, one that conceptualizes modern media as more than the products of individual human actors, social interests, or technological determinants. They are, rather, profoundly nonhuman phenomena that both draw on and mimic the alien lifeworlds of insects. Deftly moving from the life sciences to digital technology, from popular culture to avant-garde art and architecture, and from philosophy to cybernetics and game theory, Parikka provides innovative conceptual tools for exploring the phenomena of network society and culture. Challenging anthropocentric approaches to contemporary science and culture, Insect Media reveals the possibilities that insects and other nonhuman animals offer for rethinking media, the conflation of biology and technology, and our understanding of, and interaction with, contemporary digital culture.

Bug Music

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Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
ISBN 13 : 1250018269
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Bug Music by : David Rothenberg

Download or read book Bug Music written by David Rothenberg and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 2013 the cicadas in the Northeastern United States will yet again emerge from their seventeen-year cycle—the longest gestation period of any animal. Those who experience this great sonic invasion compare their sense of wonder to the arrival of a comet or a solar eclipse. This unending rhythmic cycle is just one unique example of how the pulse and noise of insects has taught humans the meaning of rhythm, from the whirr of a cricket's wings to this unfathomable and exact seventeen-year beat. In listening to cicadas, as well as other humming, clicking, and thrumming insects, Bug Music is the first book to consider the radical notion that we humans got our idea of rhythm, synchronization, and dance from the world of insect sounds that surrounded our species over the millions of years over which we evolved. Completing the trilogy he began with Why Birds Sing and Thousand Mile Song, David Rothenberg explores a unique part of our relationship with nature and sound—the music of insects that has provided a soundtrack for humanity throughout the history of our species. Bug Music continues Rothenberg's in-depth research and spirited writing on the relationship between human and animal music, and it follows him as he explores insect influences in classical and modern music, plays his saxophone with crickets and other insects, and confers with researchers and scientists nationwide. This engaging and thought-provoking book challenges our understanding of our place in nature and our relationship to the creatures surrounding us, and makes a passionate case for the interconnectedness of species.

The Infested Mind

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199374937
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis The Infested Mind by : Jeffrey Lockwood

Download or read book The Infested Mind written by Jeffrey Lockwood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human reaction to insects is neither purely biological nor simply cultural. And no one reacts to insects with indifference. Insects frighten, disgust and fascinate us. Jeff Lockwood explores this phenomenon through evolutionary science, human history, and contemporary psychology, as well as a debilitating bout with entomophobia in his work as an entomologist. Exploring the nature of anxiety and phobia, Lockwood explores the lively debate about how much of our fear of insects can be attributed to ancestral predisposition for our own survival and how much is learned through individual experiences. Drawing on vivid case studies, Lockwood explains how insects have come to infest our minds in sometimes devastating ways and supersede even the most rational understanding of the benefits these creatures provide. No one can claim to be ambivalent in the face of wasps, cockroaches or maggots but our collective entomophobia is wreaking havoc on the natural world as we soak our food, homes and gardens in powerful insecticides. Lockwood dissects our common reactions, distinguishing between disgust and fear, and invites readers to consider their own emotional and physiological reactions to insects in a new framework that he's derived from cutting-edge biological, psychological, and social science.

Insects and Human Life

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000189813
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Insects and Human Life by : Brian Morris

Download or read book Insects and Human Life written by Brian Morris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering book looks at the importance of insects to culture. While in the developed West a good deal of time and money may be spent trying to exterminate insects, in other cultures human-insect relations can be far more subtle and multi-faceted. Like animals, insects may be revered or reviled - and in some tribal communities insects may be the only source of food available. How people respond to, make use of, and relate to insects speaks volumes about their culture. In an effort to get to the bottom of our vexed relationship with the insect world, Brian Morris spent years in Malawi, a country where insects proliferate and people contend. In Malawi as in many tropical regions, insects have a profound impact on agriculture, the household, disease and medicine, and hence on oral literature, music, art, folklore, recreation and religion. Much of the complexity of human-insect relations rests on paradox: insects may represent the source of contagion, but they are also integral to many folk remedies for a wide range of illnesses. They may be at the root of catastrophic crop failure, but they can also be a form of sustenance.Weaving science with personal observations, Morris demonstrates a profound and intimate knowledge of virtually every aspect of human-insect relations. Not only is this book extraordinarily useful in terms of the more practical side of entomology, it also provides a wealth of information on the role of insects in cultural production. Malawian proverbs alone provide many such delightful examples - 'Bemberezi adziwa nyumba yake' ('The carpenter bee knows his own home'). This final volume in Morris' trilogy on Malawi's animal and insect worlds is certain to become a classic study of uncharted territory - the insect world that surrounds us and how we relate to it. Praise for The Power of Animals:Although based upon examination of a single culture, Morris incorporates ecological and anthropological concepts that expand this study of

The Insect and the Image

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Author :
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 0816667640
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (166 download)

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Book Synopsis The Insect and the Image by : Janice Neri

Download or read book The Insect and the Image written by Janice Neri and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the picturing of insects inspired new ideas about art, science, nature, and commerce

The Secret Life of Insects

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Publisher : Transaction Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1412815894
Total Pages : 157 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (128 download)

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Book Synopsis The Secret Life of Insects by : Peter Milward

Download or read book The Secret Life of Insects written by Peter Milward and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every science, including the study of insects, may have circumscribed limits, but its deeper principles open up new worlds of possibility. Milward uncovers these hidden principles by examining the daily lives and habits of insects. His studies lead him to fascinating speculations, taking the reader into the realms not only of literature, as suggested by the subtitle, but also of philosophy and theology. When Milward discusses what everybody knows about insects and what he has personally observed, he relates insects to human life in general. His insights help us feel a certain fellowship with the insects, or at least with some of the more familiar insects. He does not let us forget that there is an important diff erence between human beings and insects. Human beings think. It is our ability to think that makes us what we are, but it is thinking that enables us to discover our affi nity with insects. The Secret Life of Insects does not probe into the hidden lives of insects or treat them as individuals. His main interest is the light insects may throw on our human experience, and the assistance they may lend us as we seek to transcend our human experience. Milward aims at the level of common knowledge. In contrast to entomological scientists, Milward finds shadowy glimpses of hidden meaning in the insect world. Th ese intimations or shadowy glimpses reveal thoughts and possibilities that will extend the human imagination. As a consequence, this work will inspire philosophers, as well as general readers interested in refl ecting on the profundity of ordinary life.

The Quantum of Explanation

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Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1351792482
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (517 download)

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Book Synopsis The Quantum of Explanation by : Randall E. Auxier

Download or read book The Quantum of Explanation written by Randall E. Auxier and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Quantum of Explanation advances a bold new theory of how explanation ought to be understood in philosophical and cosmological inquiries. Using a complete interpretation of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophical and mathematical writings and an interpretive structure that is essentially new, Auxier and Herstein argue that Whitehead has never been properly understood, nor has the depth and breadth of his contribution to the human search for knowledge been assimilated by his successors. This important book effectively applies Whitehead’s philosophy to problems in the interpretation of science, empirical knowledge, and nature. It develops a new account of philosophical naturalism that will contribute to the current naturalism debate in both Analytic and Continental philosophy. Auxier and Herstein also draw attention to some of the most important differences between the process theology tradition and Whitehead’s thought, arguing in favor of a Whiteheadian naturalism that is more or less independent of theological concerns. This book offers a clear and comprehensive introduction to Whitehead’s philosophy and is an essential resource for students and scholars interested in American philosophy, the philosophy of mathematics and physics, and issues associated with naturalism, explanation and radical empiricism.

The Other Insect Societies

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674021631
Total Pages : 824 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (216 download)

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Book Synopsis The Other Insect Societies by : James T. Costa

Download or read book The Other Insect Societies written by James T. Costa and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-09-30 with total page 824 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his exploration of insect societies that don't fit the eusocial schema, James T. Costa gives these interesting phenomena their due. He synthesizes the scattered literature about social phenomena across the arthropod phylum: beetles and bugs, caterpillars and cockroaches, mantids and membracids, sawflies and spiders.

The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World

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Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 1324006609
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World by : Oliver Milman

Download or read book The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World written by Oliver Milman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A devastating examination of how collapsing insect populations worldwide threaten everything from wild birds to the food on our plate. From ants scurrying under leaf litter to bees able to fly higher than Mount Kilimanjaro, insects are everywhere. Three out of every four of our planet’s known animal species are insects. In The Insect Crisis, acclaimed journalist Oliver Milman dives into the torrent of recent evidence that suggests this kaleidoscopic group of creatures is suffering the greatest existential crisis in its remarkable 400-million-year history. What is causing the collapse of the insect world? Why does this alarming decline pose such a threat to us? And what can be done to stem the loss of the miniature empires that hold aloft life as we know it? With urgency and great clarity, Milman explores this hidden emergency, arguing that its consequences could even rival climate change. He joins the scientists tracking the decline of insect populations across the globe, including the soaring mountains of Mexico that host an epic, yet dwindling, migration of monarch butterflies; the verdant countryside of England that has been emptied of insect life; the gargantuan fields of U.S. agriculture that have proved a killing ground for bees; and an offbeat experiment in Denmark that shows there aren’t that many bugs splattering into your car windshield these days. These losses not only further tear at the tapestry of life on our degraded planet; they imperil everything we hold dear, from the food on our supermarket shelves to the medicines in our cabinets to the riot of nature that thrills and enlivens us. Even insects we may dread, including the hated cockroach, or the stinging wasp, play crucial ecological roles, and their decline would profoundly shape our own story. By connecting butterfly and bee, moth and beetle from across the globe, the full scope of loss renders a portrait of a crisis that threatens to upend the workings of our collective history. Part warning, part celebration of the incredible variety of insects, The Insect Crisis is a wake-up call for us all.

Insect Behavior

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192518097
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis Insect Behavior by : Alex Córdoba-Aguilar

Download or read book Insect Behavior written by Alex Córdoba-Aguilar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-19 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insects display a staggering diversity of behaviors. Studying these systems provides insights into a wide range of ecological, evolutionary, and behavioral questions including the genetics of behavior, phenotypic plasticity, chemical communication, and the evolution of life-history traits. This accessible text offers a new approach that provides the reader with the necessary theoretical and conceptual foundations, at different hierarchical levels, to understand insect behavior. The book is divided into three main sections: mechanisms, ecological and evolutionary consequences, and applied issues. The final section places the preceding chapters within a framework of current threats to human survival - climate change, disease, and food security - before providing suggestions and insights as to how we can utilize an understanding of insect behavior to control and/or ameliorate them. Each chapter provides a concise, authoritative review of the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological foundations of each topic.

Insect Poetics

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Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Insect Poetics by : Eric C. Brown

Download or read book Insect Poetics written by Eric C. Brown and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insects are everywhere. There are millions of species sharing the world with humans and other animals. Though literally woven into the fabric of human affairs, insects are considered alien from the human world. Animal studies and rights have become a fecund field, but for the most part scant attention has been paid to the relationship between insects and humans. Insect Poetics redresses that imbalance by welcoming insects into the world of letters and cultural debate. In Insect Poetics, the first book to comprehensively explore the cultural and textual meanings of bugs, editor Eric Brown argues that insects are humanity's "other." In order to be experienced, the insect world must be mediated by art or technology (as in the case of an ant farm or Kafka's Metamorphoses) while humans observe, detached and fascinated. In eighteen original essays, this book illuminates the ways in which our human intellectual and cultural models have been influenced by the natural history of insects. Through critical readings contributors address such topics as performing insects in Shakespeare's Coriolanus, the cockroach in the contemporary American novel, the butterfly's "voyage out" in Virginia Woolf, and images of insect eating in literature and popular culture. In surprising ways, contributors tease out the particularities of insects as cultural signifiers and propose ways of thinking about "insectivity," suggesting fertile cross-pollinations between entomology and the arts, between insects and the humanities. Contributors: May Berenbaum, Yves Cambefort, Marion W. Copeland, Nicky Coutts, Bertrand Gervais, Sarah Gordon, Cristopher Hollingsworth, Heather Johnson, Richard J. Leskosky, Tony McGowan, Erika Mae Olbricht, Marc Olivier, Roy Rosenstein, Rachel Sarsfield, Charlotte Sleigh, Andre Stipanovic. Eric C. Brown is assistant professor of English at the University of Maine at Farmington. He has written previously about insects and eschatology in Edmund Spenser's Muiopotmos.

For Love of Insects

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674736443
Total Pages : 468 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis For Love of Insects by : Thomas Eisner

Download or read book For Love of Insects written by Thomas Eisner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005-10-31 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine beetles ejecting defensive sprays as hot as boiling water; female moths holding their mates for ransom; caterpillars disguising themselves as flowers by fastening petals to their bodies; termites emitting a viscous glue to rally fellow soldiers--and you will have entered an insect world once beyond imagining, a world observed and described down to its tiniest astonishing detail by Thomas Eisner. The story of a lifetime of such minute explorations, For Love of Insects celebrates the small creatures that have emerged triumphant on the planet, the beneficiaries of extraordinary evolutionary inventiveness and unparalleled reproductive capacity. To understand the success of insects is to appreciate our own shortcomings, Eisner tells us, but never has a reckoning been such a pleasure. Recounting exploits and discoveries in his lab at Cornell and in the field in Uruguay, Australia, Panama, Europe, and North America, Eisner time and again demonstrates how inquiry into the survival strategies of an insect leads to clarifications beyond the expected; insects are revealed as masters of achievement, forms of life worthy of study and respect from even the most recalcitrant entomophobe. Filled with descriptions of his ingenious experiments and illustrated with photographs unmatched for their combination of scientific content and delicate beauty, Eisner's book makes readers participants in the grand adventure of discovery on a scale infinitesimally small, and infinitely surprising.

Insectopedia

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 1400096960
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Insectopedia by : Hugh Raffles

Download or read book Insectopedia written by Hugh Raffles and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-03-22 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book A stunningly original exploration of the ties that bind us to the beautiful, ancient, astoundingly accomplished, largely unknown, and unfathomably different species with whom we share the world. For as long as humans have existed, insects have been our constant companions. Yet we hardly know them, not even the ones we’re closest to: those that eat our food, share our beds, and live in our homes. Organizing his book alphabetically, Hugh Raffles weaves together brief vignettes, meditations, and extended essays, taking the reader on a mesmerizing exploration of history and science, anthropology and travel, economics, philosophy, and popular culture. Insectopedia shows us how insects have triggered our obsessions, stirred our passions, and beguiled our imaginations.

California Insects

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520037823
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (378 download)

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Book Synopsis California Insects by : Jerry A. Powell

Download or read book California Insects written by Jerry A. Powell and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1979 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is that creature that just landed on my arm? What will that funny-looking caterpillar turn into? What do lady-bugs eat? This book will help you to answer such questions (and many more) about your local insects. - From inside cover.

Organization of Insect Societies

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674031258
Total Pages : 638 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (312 download)

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Book Synopsis Organization of Insect Societies by : Jürgen Gadau

Download or read book Organization of Insect Societies written by Jürgen Gadau and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-28 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this landmark volume, an international group of scientists has synthesized their collective expertise and insight into a newly unified vision of insect societies and what they can reveal about how sociality has arisen as an evolutionary strategy. Jürgen Gadau and Jennifer Fewell have assembled leading researchers from the fields of molecular biology, evolutionary genetics, neurophysiology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary theory to reexamine the question of sociality in insects. Recent advances in social complexity theory and the sequencing of the honeybee genome ensure that this book will be valued by anyone working on sociality in insects. At the same time, the theoretical ideas presented will be of broad-ranging significance to those interested in social evolution and complex systems.

What Good Are Bugs? Insects in the Web of Life

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Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674044746
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis What Good Are Bugs? Insects in the Web of Life by : Gilbert WALDBAUER

Download or read book What Good Are Bugs? Insects in the Web of Life written by Gilbert WALDBAUER and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the first to catalogue ecologically important insects by their roles, gives us an enlightening look at how insects work in ecosystems--what they do, how they live, and how they make life as we know it possible. Waldbauer combines anecdotes from entomological history with insights into the intimate workings of the natural world, describing the intriguing and sometimes amazing behavior of these tiny creatures. As entertaining as it is informative, this charmingly illustrated volume captures the full sweep of insects' integral place in the web of life.