The Solitary Bees: Biology, Evolution, Conservation

作者：Elsa Youngsteadt · 发表于：American Entomologist · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1093/ae/tmaa014 · 被引用次数：155 · 研究领域：Plant and animal studies、Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior、Insect and Pesticide Research

As a graduate student working on mutualisms involving ants, I made it a project to read The Ants, the massive, definitive synthesis of formicid biology by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson. I read a couple of pages every day at breakfast, and encountered hundreds of remarkable ideas and details I never would have known to search for. I heartily recommend a similar approach to The Solitary Bees. With 58 pages of references dated from 1745 to 2019, this book is an exhaustive and well-indexed manual of solitary bee biology, prepared by authors who are respected experts in the field. Its readable, narrative style and comfortably subdivided text also lend themselves to leisurely consumption by any bee-interested scientist or dedicated lay reader. THIS BOOK LUXURIATES IN THE DETAILS OF BEES’ DAILY LIVES. IT GIVES NATURAL HISTORY STORIES THE SPACE TO UNFOLD, AND ORGANIZES THEM IN THE CONTEXT OF LIFECYCLES AND PHYLOGENY. This volume will go on my shelf next to Charles Michener’s The Bees of the World, to which it is a fine companion. Whereas Bees of the World emphasizes taxonomy, anatomy, and identification—with authoritative but abbreviated treatments of natural history and ecology—this book luxuriates in the details of bees’ daily lives. It gives natural history stories the space to unfold, and organizes them in the context of life cycles and phylogeny. Indeed, the authors declare that a primary goal was to excavate hidden gems of solitary bee biology from older and specialized ...