Steve Nicholls (Head of Zeus)
IT IS the dizzying transitions of scale that best characterise our complex relationship with insects. Zooming in, we peer with ghastly fascination at parasitoid fairy flies, which are small enough to parasitise not the bodies but the eggs of other insects. Zooming out, we gawp at the 10 million-odd insect species 鈥� and marvel that the total weight of the Amazon rainforest鈥檚 ants is about four times the combined weight of all the vertebrates there.
In Alien Worlds: How insects conquered the Earth, and why their fate will determine our future, entomologist and film-maker Steve Nicholls handles this, and more, with great deftness in an exhilarating gallop across the hexapod cosmos.
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A well-judged introduction leads us gently into chapters exploring the extraordinary lives of Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera, Coleoptera and the rest. We discover how they are constructed, what they do, how they reproduce and, here鈥檚 the rub, how we would cope without them.
Not well, it seems. 鈥淭he simple fact,鈥� Nicholls writes, 鈥渋s that we need insects far more than they need us.鈥� Pollinators, predators, ecosystem engineers: insects of all kinds help shape and sustain the living world on which we all depend, whether we realise it or not.
Two questions are likely to preoccupy readers as they pass from the 鈥渃ontrolled plummets鈥� of gliding ants to the sad predilection of some Australian jewel beetles as they attempt sex with discarded beer bottles. One, why do they do what they do? Two, how do we know that they do it?
On the first point, Nicholls, like any good Darwinian, doesn鈥檛 shy away from difficult questions. He walks us thoughtfully through the probable evolutionary pathways of the insect body, arthropod mouthparts, wings and flight, plant-pollinator relationships, grasshopper songs and locust swarming. Again, he demonstrates his mastery of scale and scope, skilfully evoking the depths of evolutionary time as well as the breadth of entomological diversity.
Yet it is on the second question where Nicholls really excels. His knowledgeable, good-humoured engagement with the human side of entomology is what elevates Alien Worlds above the ranks of other insect primers and handbooks.
As we might expect from his long, globetrotting career in wildlife film-making, Nicholls has a fund of his own stories 鈥� like the time he set up a colony of termites in a Borneo hotel room, only to find that his 鈥渆scape-proof鈥� polythene sheeting wasn鈥檛 100 per cent effective.
The book also illuminates the startling endeavours of other scientists and naturalists in enriching our understanding. From counting the chambers of ants鈥� nests (the record is 7864) and measuring the running speeds of tiger beetles (one achieves a top speed of about 2.5 metres per second) to building robot dragonflies, entomology is a live science, not pinned and reeking of mothballs.
Real ecological heroes emerge, too, such as zoologist Fred Urquhart and naturalists Ken Brugger and Cathy Aguado (now Catalina Trail). They discovered the remote winter home of the endangered monarch butterfly in Mexico鈥檚 Sierra Madre Occidental mountains.
Underpinning all this is the knowledge 鈥� set out starkly, but never sensationalised 鈥� that this alien world is under terrible strain. Globally, insect populations 鈥渉ave crashed in an alarming way鈥�, writes Nicholls. 鈥淚n some places there were ten times as many insects crawling, hopping and flying about when I began my studies as there are now.鈥�
His book is an entrancing, moving exploration of the innumerable little lives flickering about us, of how they came to be here and how they may soon be lost forever.
Richard Smyth is a writer based聽in聽Bradford, UK
