Best entomology books according to redditors

We found 50 Reddit comments discussing the best entomology books. We ranked the 27 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about Entomology:

u/_delirium · 17 pointsr/askscience

When workers accept or reject a queen is fairly complex, and depends on a lot of circumstances, including presence of existing queen(s), pheremonal similarity, possibly environmental or species differences, etc. There's been some study of it lately because of scientific curiosity over how large ant colonies interact and sometimes merge into "supercolonies" that act in a functionally unified way. There seem to be some interspecific (containing multiple ant species) colonies as well, though when that happens isn't fully understood.

One citation to a small piece of the puzzle, summarizing studies on interacting networks of fire-ant colonies:
> [Ken] Ross and others showed that if enough of the ants in a colony, about 15%, have a certain allele, the colony will accept extra queens into the nest. This could be a response to interaction rate. Perhaps the ants respond to the rate at which they meet other ants that have the polygyne allele, b, which seems to affect the odor of the ant that carries it. Perhaps if the rate of interaction with b reaches a certain threshold, possibly leading workers to broaden the range of odors they include in their experience of nestmates, then the workers are more likely to accept a foreign queen.

(That quote from pp. 73-74 of this book).

u/Phylogenizer · 7 pointsr/snakes

If it's maladaptive and variation exists in the population, selection can act on individuals to change the frequency of the behavior in a population. These behaviors as responses to stimuli are coded in DNA, that's how they become fixed (in the hardy-weinberg sense) in a population. Do you think snakes are so smart they are self aware of their own behavior and the behavior of others in the population? We're so far out of what the literature shows at this point I don't think that I can continue this conversation. In each response, you're moving the goal posts. There are some really good resources out there to help, things like http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/animal-behavior-13228230 and https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0878939660

u/asherdi · 6 pointsr/Entomology

The Insects: An Outline of Entomology by Gullan & Cranston is pretty much the standard textbook on entomology.

u/nights_and_weekends · 4 pointsr/Entomology

As a single resource for identification keys and guides for capturing and mounting insects, I really like the 3rd edition of How To Know the Insects. The keys will get you to Family and there are many common North American species listed.

u/Funkentelechy · 3 pointsr/Entomology

The Insects: An Outline of Entomology is used in many intro entomology classes and covers everything from taxonomy to physiology.

u/svarogteuse · 3 pointsr/Beekeeping

>The median age of the swarm bees was lower than that of the colony bees, that of the scouts was higher than that of the swarm bees, and that of the scouts was slightly less than that of the foragers.

Source more details in the paper, and sources for others who have done similar research.

I don't recall any details on swarm ages in The Biology of the Honey Bee by Winston, but I know he has a number of tables for ages of other activities and its likely the most accessible being an in print book rather than an article in a journal you likely don't get so I'd start there.

u/redditopus · 3 pointsr/neuro

Vertebrate neuroanatomical knowledge is not the whole picture, and any discussion of nervous system evolution is incomplete without a discussion of nervous systems in invertebrates (and in fact I think the discussion is woefully biased toward vertebrates - not without reason, I suppose, since we are vertebrates and much of this is relevant to health, but vertebrates are 3% of animals and only marginally more of animals with a CNS).

I STRONGLY suggest you pick up this book by Nicholas Strausfeld (who is an excellent scientist, an excellent presenter, and a nice person to boot - I've met him): http://www.amazon.com/Arthropod-Brains-Functional-Historical-Significance/dp/0674046331 . You want the most populous nervous system on the planet? ARTHROPODS

Also, cephalopods should also be a group that you look into, as they rival some reptiles and small mammals for brains, yet we have not shared an ancestor with them since before the Cambrian. And trust me: their brethren the clams are dumb.

He's written plenty of papers geared toward a scientific crowd as well.

I also strongly suggest poking around developmental neurobiology, as it stands to fill in the gaps where studies of the adult animal, phylogenetics, and paleontology do not.

u/thirtydirtybirds · 3 pointsr/whatsthisbug

An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles is a great book about beetles, for iding them i like the peterson guides.

u/TheLurkerSpeaks · 2 pointsr/environmental_science

We use both of these for our bioassessment, besides what's available in Standard Methods. The first text there is the one that is referred to in pretty much all of the relevant government manuals and directives.

https://www.amazon.com/INTRODUCTION-AQUATIC-INSECTS-NORTH-AMERICA/dp/075756321X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1509585700&sr=1-1&keywords=aquatic+insects+of+north+america

https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Common-Freshwater-Invertebrates-America/dp/0939923874

u/manjusri_cuts_away · 2 pointsr/biology

Alcock's Animal Behavior is a great textbook that ties behavior to evolutionary processes. I just started a PhD where one component is ethology, which I haven't had a course in. This was the book my advisor recommended.

As far as ecology goes, the only general ecology book I've used was my undergrad text, which is pretty approachable if you don't have background- Smith and Smith - Elements of Ecology. I took aquatic ecology and terrestrial ecology, was underwhelmed with both texts.

u/Pelusteriano · 2 pointsr/askscience

TL;DR: Microscopic animals can be very small, down to 50 μm length. The main issue is the diffusion of oxygen.

Smaller animals reside solely on the transportation of oxygen -the main resource in animal metabolism- by diffusion, this is because the surface:volume ratio: smaller organisms (smaller volume) have more surface than volume, this helps the diffusion of oxygen. Diffusion is very effective when the diffusion path is less than 1.0 mm.

Here are some groups of very small microscopic animals:

Group | Length (μm)
-----|---------
Rotifers | 50, 100-2000
Gastrotrichs | 75, 50-3000
Kinorhynchs | 150, 100-3000
Hydra (genus of cnidarians) | 500-20000


As you can see, the most basal groups of animals are pretty small. For comparison, bacteria can be 0.5-5 μm in length.

u/eupholus · 2 pointsr/whatsthisbug
u/luispotro · 2 pointsr/AnimalBehavior
u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/BackYardChickens

Yes, they do have the ability to form friendship bonds with other chickens. This book provides some nice detail about the cognitive and emotional lives of chickens.

u/Inesophet · 2 pointsr/aliens

I know this one might be out there. But for folks with a Basic background in biology you may enjoy Parasitoid Viruses

If you are interested in how different Alien biology may be then in absence of actual aliens for the time being you can read this one.

u/harlows_monkeys · 2 pointsr/programming

It can be hilarious when bots encounter other bots. My favorite, which I think will be hard to top, was when two pricing bots on Amazon got into a loop.

Bot 1 was from seller 1, a long time book seller who had a near perfect rating based on a very large number of customer reports. Bot 2 was from seller 2, a newer seller with a very good reputation but based on much fewer reports.

When people see a book at both a high reputation/high feedback seller and a almost as high/much less feedback seller, they will often buy from the first even if the price is a little higher there.

A clever high reputation/high feedback seller can take advantage of this to get a cut of sales on books that he does not have. Find a lower reputation seller listing a book you don't have, and list it on your store, pricing it at their price plus shipping plus a profit for you. For instance, if they are selling it for $20, and it costs $3 to ship it from them, you might price it at $25. Many people will buy directly from the other seller, to save $5, but some will prefer to go with the safe choice and will buy from you. When that happens, you simply buy it for $20+$3 from the other seller and ship it on to your customer.

Seller 1's bot implemented this. It looked for suitable books and listed them on seller 1's site at a higher price than they were at the other sites. It would list them on seller 1's site at 1.27059 times the price they were on the other sites.

Seller 2's bot looked for other sellers selling the same books, and tried to undercut them on price, setting the price to 0.9983 times what it was at the other sites.

When seller 2 listed an obscure book on fly genetics, bot 1 discovered it and listed it for seller 1. Bot 2 noticed that, and adjusted the price. Bot 1 noticed and adjusted.

The price reached $23.7 million (plus $3.99 shipping) before the sellers caught on and stopped their bots.

Here is an article about this particular bot fight.

u/thepeepa · 1 pointr/insects

This book was required when I took my very first Entomology class (about to graduate with my B. S. in Ento). It's easy and interesting to read and covers the basics:

Essential Entomology: An Order-by-Order Introduction by George C. McGavin et al. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0198500025/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_Jy4qtb0VB34YQ

u/delayedregistration · 1 pointr/drawing

if you like beetles, try reading this if you haven't already...

u/SharksAlive · 1 pointr/mildlyinteresting

The book I was talking about is just that: "An Inordinant Fondness for Beetles". Beautiful photography. I guess you were talking about the quote. The part about the weevils always bothered me tho. How many do you see on a regular basis? And if Circulionidae is split up, what does God currently have a crush on, according to systematics guys (who are a bunch of freaks, even among entomologists)?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520223233/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0805037519&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1KR8ECR5CM0CF5KVNPEM

u/where_are_the_grapes · 1 pointr/whatsthisbug

While thick, one book you'll probably want to look into is Evolution of the Insects by Grimaldi and Engel. It's required reading in some taxonomy courses. As much as I like physical print for reference books, the digital $17 version looks awfully tempting, and you wouldn't be out too much.

u/formicarium · 1 pointr/AskScienceDiscussion

There is no single answer to the field guide question - you should just look for one relevant to your area. Conservative estimates put the number of insect species in the world around six million, so no single field guide is going to be able to tell you more than very common species for a specific area and maybe some family-level keys to give you a general idea.

As far as textbooks go this one is pretty decent. If you are in a university there's a good chance it's in your library, otherwise it's not super expensive 2nd hand.

u/liquidanbar · 1 pointr/AskScienceDiscussion

I'd recommend Gullan and Cranston's The Insects: An Outline of Entomology.

A field guide is fairly regional, so you'll need to let us know where you're located!

u/darkhjustice · 1 pointr/pokemon
u/randomcharacterstrng · 1 pointr/Entomology

Alex Wild has a great blog. He's arguably the best insect photographer around. Another favourite of mine is Piotr Naskrecki's The Smaller Majority.

If you want to go more in-depth: Gullan & Cranston's The Insects is an excellent introductory entomology textbook

u/feegee6 · 1 pointr/tipofmytongue
u/mfkap · 1 pointr/science

I used to student research in a fly lab... really interesting stuff. Probably the most intellectually stimulating stuff I have ever done. If you want to learn more about it, a great intro book is Fly Pushing by R. Greenspan

u/SickSalamander · 1 pointr/science

"Fly Pushing" is altering fly genetics through selective breeding and/or direct genetic manipulation.

It is the title of a popular book, too

u/0111oiq · 1 pointr/Rabbits

I tried to give examples, but I guess those aren't useful if you haven't read any of their books.

These are somewhat narrative "stories" on behavioral studies, mostly. Not academic journals.

ie:

https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Raven-Investigations-Adventures-Wolf-Birds/dp/0061136050

https://www.amazon.com/Bumblebee-Economics-New-Preface-Revised/dp/0674016394/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494625381&sr=1-1&keywords=Bernd+Heinrich+bee

https://www.amazon.com/Peacemaking-among-Primates-Frans-Waal/dp/067465921X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494625311&sr=1-1&keywords=peacemaking+among+primates

Domestic or wild does not matter to me besides not being interested in things relating to "caring for pet rabbits". Neither does "type" really; a variety would be fine.

u/scottish_beekeeper · 1 pointr/Beekeeping

The drone endophallus removal is from multiple sources, including Winston and Seely, and is found in lots of papers as 'fact', such as: "we
nevertheless assume that not every drone leaves the bulb of endophallus in the sting chamber to be subsequently removed by the queen and/or the next drone." (Woyke, J. "Anatomo-physiological changes in queen-bees returning from mating flights, and the process of multiple mating." Bull. Acad. Polon. Sci 4 (1956): 81-87).

The above (admittedly old) paper states that a proportion of mated queens return with no endophallus present, but none were found with multiple present. I'd be interested to see references for drones not performing active removal, since that would imply returning queens might have multiple present.

The UV info I originally sourced from Winston, but further digging seems to show that the endophallus does not emit light in and of itself, but rather the mucus produced is highly reflective of UV light, which attracts drones. (G. Koeniger. "The role of the mating sign in honey bees, Apis mellifera L.: does it hinder or promote multiple mating?." Animal behaviour 39.3 (1990):444-449.)

u/Alantha · 1 pointr/AskScienceDiscussion

Here are a few to get you started, some maybe be textbooks or textbook like, but they're incredibly informative:

Insects:

u/bunker_man · 1 pointr/TrueChristian

No asking questions! You need to read this and this.