An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles

by Arthur V. Evans and Charles L. Bellamy

photography by Lisa Charles Watson

University of California Press, 208 pp., $24.95 (paper); $40 hardback

Nobody cares for beetles. That’s overstating it a bit, but considering their ubiquity (beetles “have penetrated nearly every terrestrial habitat” and account for “20% of all living organisms”), they have received a less-than-fair share of attention. Evans and Bellamy put a positive spin on this history of neglect, noting that “entomology is one of the few biological disciplines in which anyone with a keen pair of eyes and an inquisitive mind can make valuable contributions to science.” An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles encourages us to see beetles in the full spectrum, to think of them as “conduits of energy flowing through the entire biosphere.” In this ambitious volume, a thorough examination of coleoptera serves as the focal point for an introduction to biology, a short course in taxonomy, and a tour of the concepts of natural history. With all the scientific ground covered here, a glossary would have been a nice touch, but Beetles does the next best thing by defining all of its terms in context, making otherwise dense material easy to digest.

This article appears in October 13 • 2000.

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