Social Life in the Insect World

A sequence of natural-history essays that closely observes and explains the behaviours, life cycles, nesting, courtship and feeding of many insects. Individual chapters describe cicadas and their song and emergence, the predatory habits and mating of mantids, scarabs and gardeners that tend or butcher prey, crickets and rival displays, dung-rolling and paternal instinct in beetles, solitary wasps, moths and caterpillars, various weevils and locusts, and the pine chafer. The tone mixes detailed field observation, simple experimental demonstration, and clear explanations of instinctual and environmental interactions among species.