BIOLOGY, ECOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE AND DIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN AFRICAN INSECTS

822 pages. Laminated pictorial boards.

Insects are those small things that keep natural ecosystems functioning, thereby making life on earth possible for all plants and animals, including humans. They provide essential ecosystem services by pollinating plants that enrich human lives by their beauty, by feeding humanity and producing the oxygen we breathe; they bury the dung of farm and wild animals that improves the soil and prevents the spread of disease; and they decompose the remains of plants, thereby returning the nutrients locked in their tissues to the soil for use by living plants in an endless cycle of life and death. There are huge numbers of them, they differ vastly among themselves, and they perform multitudes of different activities during their respective lives. They are the only invertebrates that fly and have a history millions of years older than flowering plants, birds and mammals. They are the only organisms to have influenced human evolution. Some aspects of their life histories are simply amazing, and their behavioural exploits astonishing.

This book documents the stories of southern African insects in over 800 pages, with 3 200 beautiful photographs illustrating the rich morphological diversity and biological attributes of the insect species of the region. We emphasise their environmental importance as ecosystem service providers, and narrate, highlight, and illustrate many of the interesting, often remarkable, aspects of their life histories and behaviour, a first for insects of this region.