Naturalists Handbook Series Review

Aphids are ubiquitous creatures in both temperate and mediterranean regions, I catch thousands in my malaise traps in my current study of the biodiversity of Lake Kerkini: Greece, and it is a problem that there are few if any good keys around. While this book does not really help me in my study, because I have little idea what plant species the specimens I catch were feeding on before they were caught, it will undoubtedly be of use for anyone wishing to learn more about the aphids in their local woods or school or backyard garden.
 
By focusing on just one group of aphids, those that are associated with deciduous trees, the authors have allowed themselves to include a little more detailed information than they could have if they had dealt with aphids as a whole. Also by linking their identification guide to particular tree species they have made their work much more accessible to amateurs and school children. In this I think they have made a wise decission.
 
The book starts with an excellent introduction to aphids, asking, and answering, the question – Why study aphids?- and indeed they are well worth studying and lend themselves well to school or private home study. The introduction continues with excellent sections on: Food; Symbionts; Host Specificity; Reproduction; Life Cycle and Dispersal. This is followed by short but well written chapters on:-Trees as a habitat; Natural enemies; Abundance, Sex, and Distribution and Global Warming preparing you well for chapter 8 which contains an introduction to identification and the identification aids.
 
For the most part I feel the keys will work excellently, my only query being that on page 81 couplet 12a where the siphunculi of one half a of the couplet are described as –slightly to markedly swollen, red- with a reference to an image that is markedly swollen, and the second 12b is –siphunculi swollen or cyclindrical, yellowish– with a reference to an image that is slightly swollen and could therefore, as the images are B/ W line drawings equally apply to 12a. I would have mentioned the colour first in both cases and delineated a bit more on the degree of overlap between the thin end of one half of the couplet and the fat end of the other.
 
Following the identification aids there is are 40 pages of Desriptions of genera and species. After this there is there is a chapter on Techniques and approaches to original work which is good and should prove useful except that I think an additional diagram or two illustrating the creation of the ‘clip cage’ would have been useful for people who are not used to manufacturing their own entomological equipment. This is the second of my three small quibbles with what is otherwise and very professional and well written and produced work. My third complaint is that nowhere in the book is the position of aphids within the greater scheme of insect classification mentioned, the words Heteroptera, Homoptera, Auchenorrhyncha and Sternorrhyncha etc. are all missing and, while I accept that some of the details are still under discussion, an additional paragraph or two explaining the the current state of our knowledge of insect classification, at least to the extent of putting the aphids into an order and sub-order would have been appreciated by most readers.
 
The book ends with a checklist of species mentioned in the book, a collection of useful addresses, that I sure will not overly please the owners of Alana Ecology and a small list of references and additional reading. All in all, considering that this book costs less that the entrance to most films at a British cinema, that it can be used in much of Europe as well as in the UK, and that it will do far more good for anybody who reads it than any film that comes out of Hollywood I would highly recommend buying it to all schools, amateur ecologists and parents in the UK and the rest of Europe.