Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity. Stephen M. Marshall. Firefly Books, Richmond Hill, Canada, 2006. 718 pp., illus. $95.00 (ISBN 1552979008 cloth).

Book reviewers typically wait until the last paragraph to reveal their overall impression of the volume under review. Allow me to save you the trouble of skipping ahead: Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity is outstanding and should be on the bookshelf of every natural historian—insect lover or not—in eastern North America.

Compared with the literature currently available on the natural history of other North American animals, such as birds and mammals, there is little available on insects. Such neglect is surprising, not only because approximately 80 percent of all named species are insects and these often beautiful six-legged creatures are of tremendous economic and ecological importance but also because insects exhibit incredible behaviors that are easy to observe in the wild. Stephen Marshall, professor of entomology at the University of Guelph, has nicely filled this void by compiling a lifetime of natural history observation, in addition to 20 years of insect photography, into a beautiful and informative guide.

Marshall's book is ideally suited for anyone with an interest in insects, from the curious backyard observer to the experienced field naturalist or professional biologist. Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity offers a comprehensive, easy-to-use identification key and photographic guide for identifying specimens from pictures or collected material as well as a full index of species by both Latin binomial and common names. I put this book through its paces this past summer during collecting trips throughout Ontario, and found that every insect I encountered was represented by a beautiful photograph and informative description.

Make no mistake, this hefty tome—hardbound, with 718 glossy pages—is not meant to be an entomological field guide tucked into the naturalist's pocket during a walk in the woods. For that purpose, I recommend more traditional field guides, such as Donald J. Borror and Richard E. White's Field Guide to the Insects of America North of Mexico (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970) or Lorus and Margery Milne's Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders (New York: Knopf, 1980). However, I stress that these more portable guides involve a severe trade-off, as they offer only the most basic information on a limited number of species compared with Marshall's guide. Besides, the need for identification in the field may be less pressing nowadays, given the frequent use of digital photography among naturalists—this past summer I snapped digital pictures of specimens in nature and later, using Marshall's guide, identified them back at my car, campsite, and home.

Nor is this guide meant to replace specialist taxonomic keys; if you require a more speciose list, consult the technical literature. Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity is, however, a happy compromise between these two requirements, covering approximately 95 percent of the insect fauna—both endemic species and introduced pests—that its readers are likely to encounter in eastern North America (“loosely interpreted as anything east of the Mississippi River and north of the state of Georgia”).

Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity is loaded with 4000 stunning photographs made by the author, thus offering a level of uniformity between illustration and description often absent in many such books. Indeed, the photography is so spectacular that this volume could stand alone as a coffee table book of insects. That nearly all of these photos were taken in the field allowed Marshall to capture his subjects striking a natural pose in their natural environment. This certainly makes these photographs more helpful for specimen identification than the black-and-white line drawings so common in other guide-books. An insect's size can often be judged through comparison with objects contained in Marshall's photos, but not always, and a scale bar would have been welcomed on some photos; however, this is a minor quibble.

Another strength of Marshall's book, and something rarely done in pocket field guides because of space restrictions, is the inclusion for some species of photos showing sex differences, color variations within species, and the stages of development. This latter feature is particularly helpful in identifying beetles and critical for identifying butterflies and moths. For readers inspired by Marshall's photography who wish to make their own photos, fear not; the author reveals his secrets and techniques in a chapter explaining how to observe, collect, and photograph insects in the wild.

In addition to its visual appeal, Marshall's book contains a wealth of biological facts and natural history trivia. For example, did you know that

You get the idea. I'll let you discover these and other fascinating facts for yourself. Put simply, not only is this book a wonderful identification guide, it will serve as a fertile source of research ideas for students of entomology.

I was impressed with how current the book's information is, particularly with respect to higher-level systematics. This was probably in part because each taxon's chapter was reviewed and edited by experts on that group. Such care illustrates the lengths to which the author went to achieve such a high-quality publication.

I realize that a single book cannot cover everything on every reader's wish list. This volume is, after all, mainly an identification guide, not a treatise on insect biology. That said, however, I offer my own wish list: It includes maps showing species distributions, phylogenetic trees illustrating the relationships within and among orders to whatever resolution is currently available, and references to the primary literature for the more esoteric bits of information discussed in the text. Incorporating these items would double the book's current size, but one way around this dilemma would be to offer additional materials online at the publisher's Web site, something now done with increasing regularity in academic publishing. Online presentation of some material has the added advantage of facilitating frequent updating—for example, as species distributions change, phylogenetic relationships are refined, and more research is published.

It would not surprise me if, decades from now, professional biologists credit Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity with inspiring them to do what they do—it's that good.