The memoir of a scientist and the wild silk moths he studiesBiologist Michael Collins has been studying wild silk moths since he was a boy. This family — which includes the largest and most colorful of the North American moths — led Collins into a long career as a scientist, and has provided him with significant insights into the process by which new species evolve. Moth Catcher is Collins’s engaging account of his development as a scientist and o...

"Coyne's knowledge of evolutionary biology is prodigious, his deployment of it as masterful as his touch is light." -Richard DawkinsIn the current debate about creationism and intelligent design, there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned-the evidence. Yet the proof of evolution by natural selection is vast, varied, and magnificent. In this succinct and accessible summary of the facts supporting the theory of natural selection, Jerry A. Coyne d...

A blend of history, science, philosophy, and environmentalism, The Tree is an engaging and elegant look at the life of the tree and what modern research tells us about their future.There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed, and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers, and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field.Fr...

Beginning in the late 1980s, a series of improbable bark beetle outbreaks unsettled iconic forests and communities across western North America. An insect the size of a rice kernel eventually killed more than 30 billion pine and spruce trees from Alaska to New Mexico. Often appearing in masses larger than schools of killer whales, the beetles engineered one of the world's greatest forest die-offs since the deforestation of Europe by peasants between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.

A world without bees would be much less colourful, with fewer plants and flowers. But that's not all -- food would be in much shorter supply, and available in much less variety. While the media focuses on colony-collapse disorder and the threats to honey bees specifically, the real danger is much greater: all bees are at risk. And because of the integral role these insects play in the ecology of our planet, we may be at risk as well.The life of Laurence Packer, a melittologist at T...

Only God can make a tree,” wrote Joyce Kilmer in one of the most celebrated of poems. In Tree: A Life Story, authors David Suzuki and Wayne Grady extend that celebration in a biography” of this extraordinary - and extraordinarily important - organism. A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions but focuses on a single tree, a Douglas fir, Tree describes in poetic detail the organism’...

From flying squirrels to grizzly bears, and from torpid turtles to insects with antifreeze, the animal kingdom relies on some staggering evolutionary innovations to survive winter. Unlike their human counterparts, who must alter the environment to accommodate physical limitations, animals are adaptable to an amazing range of conditions.Examining everything from food sources in the extremely barren winter land-scape to the chemical composition that allows certain creatures to surviv...

Ina book destined to become a classic, biologist and acclaimed nature writer Bernd Heinrich takes readers on an eye-opening journey through the hidden life of a forest.

"With a delightfully irascible sense of humor, Henry Gee reflects on our origin . . . an excellent primer on how—and how not—to think about human evolution." —Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite RexThe idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new...

WINNER OF THE 2018 JOHN BURROUGHS MEDAL FOR OUTSTANDING NATURAL HISTORY WRITING“Both a love song to trees, an exploration of their biology, and a wonderfully philosophical analysis of their role they play in human history and in modern culture.” —Science FridayThe author of Sounds Wild and Broken and the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Forest Unseen visits with nature’s most magnificent networkers — trees...

The natural world holds secrets under every rock and around every tree. If you've ever wondered what life is like through a microscope, telescope, or with the naked eye--you'll love this book!You will:Run with the antelope across the American plains and learn about the food chain.Climb with a monkey to the highest tree in the rainforest and discover how photosynthesis keeps leaves green.Sink to the bottom of the ocean to follow cre...

Thorough, detailed, and scientifically up-to-date, Prairies: A Natural History provides a comprehensive nontechnical guide to the biology and ecology of the prairies, or the Great Plains grasslands of North America, offering a view of the past, a vision for the future, and a clear focus on the present. With a total area of more than 3.5 million square kilometers (500,000 in Canada and the remainder in the United States), the prairies occupy the heartland of the co...