By Sid Perkins
Planet of the Bugs
Scott Richard Shaw
Univ. of Chicago, $27.50
The 165-million-year-long era when dinosaurs roamed the Earth shouldn’t be called the Age of Reptiles. Nor should the era that followed, which extends to the present, be christened the Age of Mammals. Just ask an insect guy.
In Planet of the Bugs, Shaw, an entomologist at the University of Wyoming, makes a good case that Earth has long been dominated by insects. The six-legged creatures have adapted to almost every ecological niche imaginable, from the icy heights of the Himalayas to the deserts of Death Valley to the scalding springs of Yellowstone National Park. Within a couple broad ecosystems, the biomass of insects outweighs that of all vertebrates combined, including humans.