Planet of the Bugs: Evolution and the Rise of Insects

by Scott Richard Shaw

This “excellent guide to the history of our planet” offers a bugs-eye view of evolution, biodiversity, and todays ecological crises (The Guardian, UK).

According to entomologist Scott Richard Shaw, dinosaurs never ruled the earth—and neither do humans. The true potentates of our planet are, and always have been, insects. Starting in the shallow oceans of ancient Earth and ending in the far reaches of outer space—where insect-like aliens may also reign—Planet of the Bugs spins a sweeping account of insects’ evolution from humble arthropod ancestors into the bugs we know today. Leaving no stone unturned, Shaw explores how evolutionary innovations such as small body size, wings, metamorphosis, and parasitic behavior have enabled insects to disperse widely, occupy increasingly narrow niches, and survive global catastrophes in their rise to dominance. Through bizarre and buggy tales—from caddisflies that construct portable houses to parasitic wasp larvae that develop in the blood of host insects—he demonstrates how changes in our planet’s geology, flora, and fauna contributed to insects’ success, and also how, in return, insects came to shape terrestrial ecosystems. And in his visits to hyperdiverse rain forests to highlight the current insect extinction crisis, Shaw reaffirms how crucial these tiny beings are to planetary health and human survival.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Nature, Biology, Evolution, Animals, Palaeontology

263 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2014

About the author

Professor of Entomology and Insect Museum Curator, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, July 1993 to present.

Reviews

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scott Richard Shaw is a bug guy. He knows his creepy-crawlies inside and out (literally), and he knows their long and remarkable history. This book uses insects to illuminate evolution through the earth’s epochs of heating, cooling, volcanism, mass extinctions, and the day to day struggles of a bug-eat-bug world.

Insects are part of the phylum Arthropoda which can arguable be traced back to 540 million years ago (MYA). Trilobites show up clearly in the fossil record by 530 MYA, by which time they had already spread worldwide. Crustaceans evolved as a subphylum of Arthropoda quite early, and are well represented in the Burgess Shale. The first insects apparently split off from Crustacea about 410 MYA, soon after plants had colonized the land. The author addresses a question which had never occurred to me but is actually quite interesting: while many insects have an aquatic larval stage, why are there no true marine insects? If mammals could evolve back to the sea, why not bugs?

By the time insects evolved, the niches of marine ecosystems were already filled by other organisms. Various mass extinctions decimated marine communities, but never so completely that the surviving marine organisms couldn’t recolonize before the insects could adapt to enter the system. Insects didn’t need to move into the already highly competitive ocean environment. They succeeded simply by being the first to colonize each new and unoccupied terrestrial niche. (p. 59)

Exploiting the available niches, insects evolved into numerous separate families, some now extinct, and some took to the air. “The Pennsylvanian subperiod (the latter half of the Carboniferous, about 320 million years ago), [saw] the first flying insects." (p. 76) There are a number of different theories about how this happened, and as with flight in reptiles or mammals, there were many intermediate forms before true flying came into being, with each step providing sufficient advantages to allow the grand experiment to continue. Wings could have evolved as means of heat transfer, giving the cold blooded insects more surface area and allowing them to warm up faster. Or they could have originally been for mating display. There is even a credible theory that they may have evolved from gills, and another that they were adapted from surface skimming.

Another question you may have never asked yourself (I certainly did not) is: why six legs?

Insects have had 360 million years to experiment with legs, but none has bothered to acquire bipedal form, or four-legged form for that matter, which is stable enough but has less potential for speed. The four-legged tetrapods were all sluggish and slow until they developed warm-blooded metabolism. Six-legged form is sublime. Fifty million insect species can’t possibly have it wrong. Eight-legged form isn’t so bad either. Just take a look at spiders, which make up thousands of species. But all in all, there doesn’t seem to be any real advantage to having eight legs; they’re nearly as good as six. (p. 61-62)

The author’s specialty is the kind of predatory wasps which find a caterpillar or other larval insect, paralyze it, and lay an egg inside which hatches and eats its way out of the host. There are thousands of species of these wasps and the book describes them in vivid if unsettling detail. For instance, some of them go through multiple larval stages, with one equipped with jaws for finding and killing any other parasites that might also be there, and another for swimming through the bloodstream. Mr. Shaw is clearly fascinated by the sophistication and complexity of parasitic wasps’ development, but when I was reading about it my mind kept going back to one of Charles Darwin's most famous quotes, as he slowly came to separate the religion of his youth from the indifferent forces of evolution, “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.”

At one time the oxygen levels in the atmosphere allowed insects to grow large, and while it would be fascinating to see a dragonfly with a foot-long wingspan, given that they are voracious predators, that meeting might have its downsides. “The appearance of gigantic flying insects correlates with peaking atmospheric oxygen. Levels had remained around 15 percent from the Cambrian to the Devonian, rising significantly to around 35 percent in the Late Carboniferous. Then they dropped back to about 15 percent by the end of the Permian.” (p. 85)

Today, of course, bugs are much smaller, and often tiny, which gives them a number of evolutionary advantages that have helped them survive for hundreds of millions of years.

Small size also provides a breathing advantage. Smaller animals have more surface area relative to the volume of cells in the body. Therefore the very smallest insects can breathe directly through the cuticle, because they are so small and live in a very moist environment where a thick skeleton is no longer needed. But the ultimate advantage to microscopic body size is that fewer resources are needed for survival. Small animals can grow and reproduce more rapidly than large animals; therefore, they evolve faster, and they can occupy much smaller ecological niches. (p. 62-63)

They survived the five mass extinctions, but it is still worth considering how they managed to do so. The Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 MYA was a close call for them. It killed off 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial ones. As the Wikipedia entry for Permian Extinction states, “The end-Permian is the largest known mass extinction of insects; according to some sources, it is the only insect mass extinction. Eight or nine insect orders became extinct and ten more were greatly reduced in diversity.”

The reasons for the Permian extinction's effects on insects are debated by specialists, with the most common theories being:
- new kinds of animal evolved, which displaced older animals that could not compete as effectively for resources.
- new plants arose, which were better adapted for drier environments. Plant-feeding insects went extinct along with their Paleozoic hosts, and they could not adapt to feed on the new plants
- massive volcanic eruptions or an asteroid collision killed oceanic plankton and catastrophically eliminated the base of the marine food web.
- plate tectonics and continental drift
- glaciers
- changing atmospheric gases, either increasing carbon dioxide or decreasing oxygen levels

We think of ourselves as the apex species on Earth, but a big brain is only one measure of success. There are 6400 extant species of mammals, but estimates of the numbers of insect species range from 2-30 million, and insects account for 80 percent of everything alive. According to the Smithsonian Institute at https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/..., “At any time, it is estimated that there are some 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive.”

I am not a bug guy, but I do have an interest in evolution, and this book did a good job using insects to explore questions of natural selection across the eons of Earth’s history. There are a lot of interesting facts, such as “Some [springtails] have glycol antifreeze in their blood, and they are the only hexapods known to live along the shorelines of Antarctic islands. On the other extreme, some have evolved to survive in dessicating deserts. They can dry out but rehydrate when it rains.” (p. 65) The author’s enthusiasm for his subject shows through clearly, and I enjoyed this book. The next time I see a pill bug in the mulch of my back yard, I will pause and consider that it is an actual terrestrial crustacean, related to crabs and shrimp, and with a pedigree stretching back hundreds of millions of years; it is worthy of a moment’s passing respect.

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot of stuff I didn't know in 'Planet of the Bugs: Evolution and the Rise of Insects' by Scott Shaw. I have read a number of science books but this is the first which explained insects have been around almost since the beginning of life on Earth, before the dinosaurs or flowering plants! In many ways, insects have been very successful for a long time. Until now.

Many insects are going instinct. (Read The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World.) It may seem that sometimes and in some places there are more of some types of insects, but it is a mirage caused by decreased diversity, an upsetting of the balance of species.

I copied the book blurb of 'Planet of the Bugs':

"Dinosaurs, however toothy, did not rule the earth—and neither do humans. But what were and are the true potentates of our planet? Insects, says Scott Richard Shaw—millions and millions of insect species. Starting in the shallow oceans of ancient Earth and ending in the far reaches of outer space—where, Shaw proposes, insect-like aliens may have achieved similar preeminence—Planet of the Bugs spins a sweeping account of insects’ evolution from humble arthropod ancestors into the bugs we know and love (or fear and hate) today.

Leaving no stone unturned, Shaw explores how evolutionary innovations such as small body size, wings, metamorphosis, and parasitic behavior have enabled insects to disperse widely, occupy increasingly narrow niches, and survive global catastrophes in their rise to dominance. Through buggy tales by turns bizarre and comical—from caddisflies that construct portable houses or weave silken aquatic nets to trap floating debris, to parasitic wasp larvae that develop in the blood of host insects and, by storing waste products in their rear ends, are able to postpone defecation until after they emerge—he not only unearths how changes in our planet’s geology, flora, and fauna contributed to insects’ success, but also how, in return, insects came to shape terrestrial ecosystems and amplify biodiversity. Indeed, in his visits to hyperdiverse rain forests to highlight the current insect extinction crisis, Shaw reaffirms just how crucial these tiny beings are to planetary health and human survival.

In this age of honeybee die-offs and bedbugs hitching rides in the spines of library books, Planet of the Bugs charms with humor, affection, and insight into the world’s six-legged creatures, revealing an essential importance that resonates across time and space."

After an opening overview, each following chapter describes what forms of life began in each major geologic Era/Period/Epoch. He starts with the Silurian Period, then moves on to the Devonian, the Carboniferous, the Permian, the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous periods, ending with the Cenozoic Era. There is so much information in these chapters! Of course, the author focuses mostly on those body structures discovered from creatures (or their fossilized shadows) frozen in Time, encapsulated in rocks and resins, which appear to have evolved into insects or are insects. He includes photos, both black and white and color plates.

I am in disbelief! Arthropods showed up in the Silurian Period (over 400 million years ago)! Dinosaur remains have been discovered in the geological record only since the Triassic Period (over 200 million years ago). The author describes when the basic tri-body structure of insects appeared. Wings came along later, developing through stages of evermore increasingly competent performance - first gliding, and then fixed in place, and after that came the muscles which allowed for folding wings sleekly back. He describes the breathing styles that have been developed, and the differing abilities of insect legs. He definitely seems to feel of invertebrates that they are the most successful life form! The proof is in the geological record.

There are vignettes about interesting insects - some of which have structures and behaviors that represent the features of many insects, and other stories about singular developments shared by only a few insect types. He explains a great deal about wasps, of which I knew nothing before. Unbelievably, they not only have been around a very very long time, there are microscopic wasps, impossibly, to me, very tiny! Small microscopic wasps are a special interest to the author. He devotes many paragraphs to wasps. But he also describes the first moths, butterflies, caterpillars and bees.

The book does not talk down to readers! I am glad I had the ebook version so I could look up some scientific words of categorization that I didn't know by touching the word and bringing up access to internet dictionaries. He clearly expects readers to keep up! There were a few diversions into the author's life which were off-topic. He also gets into the scientific arguments and competing guesses of why the parts of the insect body evolved the way that they did. Most of these guesses are very reasonable, taking into account the air (how much oxygen), the global warming/freezing temperatures of the earth, the tectonic movement of the continents, over the millennia insects have been around (insects HAVE been around for millions of years!). Insects survived the mass extinctions most mammals and dinosaurs did not. In the last chapter, he discusses the strong possibility of insects on other planets based on what we know of evolutionary forces on earth - after all, it's a fluke people exist (big asteroid hitting earth), and we aren't nearly as sturdy of a life form as insects are.

Gentle reader, tell the truth. Until now, have you ever seen or heard or read much about the evolution of insects? Or know their existence predates almost every creature you've ever learned about? Do you ever see them in movies? I confess I've seen a few B-list sci-fi movies with dinosaurs and huge insects attacking people, but it never crossed my mind to believe insects actually DID exist alongside dinosaurs! Or that they were ever big. And some of them WERE actually huge! Mothra kinda was real! Omg.

Ok, none of them were the size of Mothra, or moths, but there were insects with two- to three-foot wing spans...

There are extensive Notes, Index and photos.

[Themightyx · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not for the scientifically illiterate. If you don't know what a pronotum is, or are unwilling to look up the meaning of the word "ecdysis" in the middle of reading a paragraph, this is not the book for you. There's nothing WRONG with that, that's just your style of reading.

If you like science and have a passing familiarity with insects and some related terminology, this is an interesting look at how early proto-insects might have come about and their subsequent species explosions.

It's quite enjoyable as well, since it answers questions about insects you might not have thought to ask yet. The explanation of wasp venom evolution was especially cool, because Dr. Scott Shaw explains how ovipositors are designed, how insect eggs had to change, and how probable venoms evolved from simpler fluids used to eject the egg. It was fascinating.

As an aside, Dr. Shaw (I assume he's a doctor, nowhere on his book does he mention it, however) seems to like and admire insects more than vertebrates. Like...other people kind of vertebrates. I giggled and rejoiced because I totally get that, but his frequent irritation at the mislabeled epochs of time got a trifle irritating.

Still, bugs are awesome and this book was fun to read and expanded my horizons significantly. If you're not intimidated by Latin, this is a fascinating peek at the evolution of insects.

[Tim Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well written work popular science work on the fossil history of insects throughout the world, from their origins up until today in terms of their evolution, interaction with environments of the past, and in some cases extinction. With some nice black and white and color photos, not too technical text, deft touches of humor, short and well-paced but not too brief chapters, Shaw really made a great case for why, through much of the history of life on Earth, this really was the Planet of the Bugs.

The opening chapter, “The Buggy Planet,” was a good introduction, making notes of the tremendous numbers of insects in the world (almost one million living species) and their tremendous importance, noting that insects are “essential as scavengers, nutrient recyclers, and soil producers, feeding on and utilizing virtually every kind of organic material” and “as pollinators and seed-dispersers for most of the flowering plants.” They are also vital because they put stress on plants, acting as driving forces for plant evolution by preventing “particular plant species from becoming superabundant and weedy, allowing more species to coexist in much smaller spaces.” Also many species of insects are themselves a vital food source to animals, be they other insects, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, even humans. Shaw also noted why there is such stunning insect diversity (in short, their small size allows them to exploit some highly specific environments, the fact many can fly allows them to exploit new niches and to colonize new areas, and the fact that many species have “complex metamorphosis with young developmental forms (larvae) that are stunningly different from adults” allow insects to not compete with their own offspring for food, further allowing more species to exist in a given area or niche).

The remaining chapters except for the very end detail the story of insect evolution through the time, also noting aspects of evolution in plants and in other animals, particularly in how they interacted with and were affected by insects, and with geological and climatological changes of the Earth and how they impacted insect life. The author in these chapters both introduced the reader to some strange forms of insect, many of which are now extinct or at least don’t exist in anything quite like past species, and introduced new orders and families of insects as they arose and used that as a springboard to talk about say dragonflies or mayflies or termites in terms of their structure, behavior, and ecological niches.

Chapter two covered two periods, the Cambrian Period and the Ordovician Period, and was mainly about the rise of arthropods, of which insects are a member. In this chapter Shaw talked about the advantages of external skeletons (protection and support), the disadvantages (some limits on growth and sensory systems) and solutions to these disadvantages (sensory spines and molting). He also discussed the defining characteristics of arthropods (external skeletons, that they are segmented animals, noting “the name “insect,” which means “in sections,” and their multijointed legs). Although not insects, I enjoyed a section on trilobites, detailed in a section titled “The Rise and Fall of the House of the Trilobites.” I did not know that trilobites had a huge design flaw (bug, sorry), in that they “had a very irregular and inefficient method of molting their skeletons,” lacking what modern insects have, the ecdysal suture, “a line of weakness along the upper side that allows them to “unzip” the old skeleton,” with trilobites often dying during molting and in addition apparently also lacked the insect innovation of recycling materials for their old skeleton while building a new skeleton beneath the old skeleton, enabling insects to resume normal life in a few hours.

Chapter three was on the Silurian Period, in which we learn about the arrival of the ancestor of insects on land (in a section titled “One Small Step for Arthropods”), some of the other goings on in the Silurian (the Silurian was the “age of the first coral reefs” as well as boasting the first jawed fishes and first freshwater fishes), we learn about sea scorpions, brachiopods, and fascinatingly for me, how insects “were able to thrive for millions of years before plants arrived and developed the capacity to survive” on land and how for a long time insects and plants “coexisted peacefully,” as all arthropods were scavengers and predators, not herbivores.

Chapter four was on the Devonian Period, again writing how others in discussing the period might focus instead on the importance of say Devonian coral reef ecosystems, or how this is the “age of amphibians.” Some really good discussion on the advantages of insect form in a delightfully titled subsection called “Two Legs Bad, Six Legs Good,” Shaw writing that the six-legged form “is sublime” and fifty million insect species “can’t possibly have it wrong.” Also a nice discussion of two of the very first arthropod groups to colonize dry land, the springtails (they “get their common name from the fact that they possess an unusual forked taillike structure on their abdomen that allows them to pole vault up to twenty times their body length and spring themselves to safety when disturbed”), the diplurans (of Order Diplura, scarce today, their “name literally means “two tails” and refers to the two prominent taillike cerci that extend from the end of their abdomens”), and the jumping bristletails or bristletails (they “have long bristly tails, and they can jump by arching their body”).

Chapter five was probably my favorite, focusing on the Carboniferous and it covers a lot of territory. The reader learns about the advent and biology of mayflies, the lack of consumers of dead wood in Carboniferous coal swamps (wood roaches did appear in the Late Carboniferous, the first important insect wood consumers), the evolution of insect wings (a fascinating section), how there are fossils of insect wings that preserve pigmentation patterns (and why such pattern exist in a world where the only things flying are insects), whether or not insects got so large because of increased oxygen in the atmosphere (possibly a factor, but not the only one at work), about griffenflies (the so-called giant dragonflies, which include the largest insects that ever lived, notably Meganeuropsis permiana, which had a wingspan of 71 centimeters or almost 3 feet in width), why the Carboniferous should perhaps be called the “age of roaches” (highly successful with their neopteran wings, which unlike older forms could be folded back over their body and put away, not held out “constantly outstretched, kitelike”; by the end of Carboniferous there were over 800 species of roaches and they made up about 60% of known Carboniferous insects).

Chapter six, “Paleozoic Holocaust,” discussed the evolution of insects in the Permian Period and how at the end this was the one time in Earth’s history there were substantial insect extinctions (along with so much of life on Earth, especially on the sea, which is also discussed). After some discussion of Permian protomammals, the author noted that the Permian saw an enormous explosion in insect types unlike anything before or since, with at least 21 insect orders (more than now), the peak diversity of old-winged insects (of which the griffenflies and dragonflies were an example), and the first orthopteroid insects (“the ur-crickets and ur-katydids”), the first hemipteroid insects (“the true bugs with sophisticated siphoning mouthparts”), and the “first insects with complete metamorphosis, the beetles, lacewings, scorpionflies, and caddisflies,” all of which are discussed in the chapter. There was an interesting discussion that of the four orders of insects that went extinct – all paleopterans (the old style wings that did not fold in, like dragonflies), all had a sucking beak and all had immature nymphs that were terrestrial, while those old-wing or paleopterans that did survive (mayflies, dragonflies, damselflies) all had nymphs that lived in ponds, lakes, streams, and marshes, not on land. One other old-winged group, order Protodonata, “the giant air dragons,” did survive the Permian mass extinction but went extinct well into the Mesozoic.

Chapter seven, “Triassic Spring,” discussed insect life in the first period of the Mesozoic Era, the time in which the first dinosaurs appeared. By this time insects were very much a major part of life on land (though overshadowed by the dinosaurs and other vertebrates), with Shaw speculating on interactions with dinosaurs and insects (namely dinosaurs feeding on insects). The Triassic also saw the advent of stick insects (Phasmatodea), webspinners (Embiodea), earwigs (Dermaptera), dobsonflies (Megaloptera), snakeflies (Raphidioptera), and wasps (Hymenoptera) as well as the first true Hemiptera (true bugs), all of which are discussed at length. Though I would have liked more information and some illustrations, Shaw also discussed one only found in the Triassic period, the “giant titan insects of the order Titanoptera,” which were predatory insects that looked like oversized katydids Also discussed are the xyelid sawflies, which became tremendously successful in the Triassic and Jurassic Periods.

Chapter eight, “Picnicking in Jurassic Park,” was also a fascinating chapter, with in addition to yes some dinosaur discussion (unavoidable really) the history of Jurassic wood wasps, the advent of parasitic wasp species, descended from “a band of rebellious young wood wasps [that had] rejected the vegetarian diets of their ancestors and decided to eat beetle larvae.” Shaw spends a lot of time discussing the origins of the sting on wasps (how they function, what they are derived from) and on the different types of parasitoids (a parasite that causes its host to die), ectoparasistism (feeding on the host from the outside) and endoparasitism (first appearing in the Jurassic, in which a parasitic predator feeds on its prey from the inside). Here we see that the author is a renown expert on parasitic wasps and one learns a great deal about the ins and outs of endoparatism (quite a lot actually). Further, there are two other ways to categorize parasitism when it involves venom, idiobiosis (the host is permanently paralyzed; wasps that do this are idiobionts) and koinobiosis (the host is either not paralyzed or only temporarily paralyzed; wasps that do this are koinobionts). The chapter closed out the with the advent of the first truly social insects, the termites, and some discussion of feathered, flying dinosaurs and their interactions with insects (including a very brief discussion of lice).

Chapter nine, “Cretaceous Bloom and Doom,” as one might guessed looked at two of the biggest events of the period, the explosion of flowering plants onto the scene and whatever caused the mass extinction event at the end (which was discussed some). Though already in existence when the Cretaceous began, it was the Cretaceous that saw the beginning of the vast evolutionary successes of butterflies and moths, with Shaw discussing what “propelled then to evolutionary greatness…the feeding habits of their immature larval stages – the caterpillars.” He also looked at the ways plants responded to insect feeding, the various defensive compounds such as “tannins, alkaloids cyanogenic glycosides, coumarins, flavonoids, steroids, and terpenoids,” examples of which include “caffeine, nicotine, morphine, atropine, cocaine, strychnine, quinine, and curare,” all present because of millions of year of plant and insect coevolution. The Cretaceous also saw the massive success of one wasp group, the nest-provisioning wasps, and the origin of social wasps, bees, and ants, all of three of which first appeared in the Cretaceous, all of which are discussed.

Chapter 10, “Cenozoic Reflections,” was a bit more rambling and yes reflective than previous chapters. Various topics visited included the possible role of insect gathering, hunting, eating on the rise of mammalian intelligence, but the chapter mostly was a good summary of insect evolution over time and had more author thoughts on parasitic wasps (definitely his specialty).

The final section was a postscript, “The Buggy Universe Hypothesis,” in which the author postulates how something insect-like might be one of the most common forms of macroscopic life in existence and why, it was something already “verifiable and has already passed one test: this planet is observed to be astronomically full of bugs.”

The book closed with some very readable notes, suggested reading organized by chapter, and a thorough index. Very few complaints. I would have liked more discussion of some of the extinct insect groups and perhaps some illustrations depicting them in life is my main one. Other than that though a very well written and fast reading popular science book.

[B. Rule · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers a really interesting subject, but the author almost spoils things. He's an extremely awkward guide, alternately dropping strident monologues about the importance of bugs, really bad poetry and journal entries, and self-aggrandizing preening about his accomplishments, with bonus petty digs at his grad students. Clearly he (or his editor) intended to pitch this to a general pop-sci audience, but they did a lazy job of it, and the tone is an odd mishmash. There's not enough detail or explanation of certain points for a lay audience, but it's also too breezy for a specialist. I wish there had been more detailed descriptions of the creatures he describes, because I often had to turn to secondary sources to learn about the bugs the author mentions. Further, the last chapter and postscript are both embarrassing in their own ways; one is a gawky paean to the diversity of the insect world, and the other is a sweaty fantasy of cosmological importance for the author's chosen field, without proof or plausibility. Despite these serious faults, I enjoyed the book because he's right that the vast proliferation and evolutionary success of arthropods of various kinds is a fascinating topic and a lynchpin for almost every conceivable ecological web on this world.

[Bill Leach · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author reviews the development of insects through the geological periods. Attention is given to the geological state of the earth and to the other life forms that were prevalent in each period. A very interesting and concise book.

Rise of the Arthropods - Cambrian (541-485 mya) and Ordovician (485-444 mya) periods
- the arthropods developed in the early Cambrian, featuring the external skeleton, segmented body and multi-jointed legs
- trilobite diversity peaked during the late Cambrian, then declined to extinction at the end of the Permian

Silurian Landfall - Silurian period (444-419 mya)
- development of the first terrestrial ecosystems
- in the sea, sea scorpions and brachiopods or lamp shells diversified
- the first colonizers of land / shoreline were the scorpions and the myriapods (millipedes, centipedes, symphylans)
- land plants developed: non-vascular liverworts and mosses, followed by vascular plants such as ferns
- plants developed woody tissues for structural support, but it was some time before arthropods evolved the ability to eat and digest these materials

Six Feet Under the Moss - Devonian period (419-359 mya)
- complex forest communities emerge and insects form abundant communities in the leaf litter: springtails, bristletails, silverfish
- the insects' six legged anatomy evolves early in the Devionan

Dancing on Air - Carboniferous period (359-299 mya)
- no wood scavengers had evolved so plant mass accumulated, forming coal and hydrocarbon beds
- the paleopteran (old wing) insects developed, the wing being a simple panel that acts as a lever
- the silverfish being their nearest ancestors - only the mayflies and dragonflies survive
- insects developed sucking mouthparts to allow them to feed on liquids
- griffenflies resembled dragonflies, the high oxygen levels of the period (35 %) allowing them to reach large sizes
- during the late Carboniferous, the neopterans (new wing) insects developed - tiny skeletal plates at the wing base allowed directional flight and the ability to fold the wings back along the body

Paleozoic Holocaust - Permian period (299-252 mya)
- the Paleozoic was drier than the Carboniferous
- this period saw the greatest diversification of insects: 22 orders lived compared to only 11 today
- the cause of the great extinction at the end of the Permian is not known
- the homopteran piercing-sucking mouthpart evolved, allowing insects to feed on plants
- complex metamorphosis developed allowing juveniles to be specialized eating machines
- the caddisflies developed the ability to spin silk, allowing numerous species with specialized adaptations
- the first beetles developed, feeding on decaying wood

Triassic Spring - Triassic period (252-201 mya)
- new kinds of plants dominated the Triassic: conifers, cycads, gingkoes and ferns
- the xyelid sawflies evolved, first order to the hymenoptera: sawflies, bees, wasps and ants

Picnicking in Jurassic Park - Jurassic period (201-145 mya)
- the hymenoptera greatly diversified, the ovipositor evolving into a sting
- parasitoid wasps developed during this period

Cretaceous Bloom and Doom - Cretaceous period (145-66 mya)
- this period featured the co-evolution of flowering plants and pollinating insects
- the increasing abundance of plant eating caterpillars caused plants to evolved numerous physical and chemical defences: more than 100,000 defensive compounds are known
- the social societies of the ants, bees, termites and wasps evolved

Cenozoic Reflections - Cenozoic period (66 mya to present)
- while the K-T event eliminated the dinosaurs and many other animals, no insect orders were lost; while some decline in species occurred, the insects subsequently diversified

[Frank Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

The golden, salad days of wasp parasitism:

"…Back in the very early days of internal parasitism, one of the wasps managed to soil its own hypodermic ovipositor with some virus… particles were injected, along with a wasp egg, into a hapless host insect. The virus replicated..disabling the immune system... Once immune systems were disabled eggs and larvae could wallow in insect blood."

Parasitic wasps, particularly the wicked tiny ones, are Shaw's particular thing in Entomolgy so it's no surprise that their evolution is the most developed topic in the book. No complaints here - it's probably my favorite topic in bugdom too.

Definitely a good read for those of us with an inner (or outer) Science Nerd I took away all sorts of new, neat stuff from Planet of the Bugs . I'm going to hold a bar crowd's attention with rhapsodies on the Grylloblattidae; ice bugs which live atop freezing mountains and feed on the carcasses of flying insects which became windswept to a frozen end. It's easy to catch the sultry appeal of Aleiodes shakirae, the little parasitic wasp named for Shakira* but I know there's got to be a way to make the Mantophasmatodae sound sexy. They are gladiator bugs after all.

As for sociopolitical economic chatter, Shaw left me with this juicy idea: It's not the world's current, insatiable need for electric lights and big ass SUV's which threaten the supply of fossil fuels. Rather, blame it all on those goddamned insects and their lousy fucking ecosystem building ways which ended the Carboniferous Period. No more coal swamp production truly screwed us out of unlimited sources of hydrocarbons to help burn away our global health. Up yours arthropods!

*Aleiodes shakirae injection of an egg into a caterpillar causes it to undulate as if belly dancing...

 For additional demented trips through the Magic Realm of Arthropods check into  Jackass on a Camel: Fossils, Freaks & Mayhem in the Cradle of Mankind


"...10:38 a.m. Maralal Central Time I was face up on my sleeping bag staring at the ugliest animal I’ve ever seen. A god awful huge and mutated wasp. It was as grotesquely deformed as I felt grotesquely poisoned. Two thirds of it was waspish enough – head, thorax and wings were the stuff of God’s most badass bug. But its abdomen was something entirely different, extending like a tumorous knockwurst or parasitic maggot, the color of a spoiled yam. Maybe it was a queen hornet looking to discharge a glob of eggs into my chest. That nasty gut recalled the egg sac of the mother bug in Aliens. Aw fuck, it was going to pump eggs in my thorax so I’d burst into a swarm of gruesome little girls at the supper table. Dammit. That just wasn’t the way I wanted to go out."

[Anshuman Swain · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up to 5.

A well researched and well written book about the origin and evolution of insects on our planet. The author brings together fantastic imagery and cutting edge science to describe past ecosystems in a very tangible way. I also appreciate that the author did not skimp on the details but rather put it in a bite sized way. Great book!
PS: a few things have changed in our understanding of insects since the boom was published but that is the way science works.

[Log · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book - it was fun reading the story of life on earth from a pov that isn't human centric. And the author studied astrophysics and entomology! What an awesome combo...

Notes and tabs (the spoiler is just for length, the concept of spoilers for a nonfiction history book would be funny tho):

"When insects invented wings there were no other flying animals, and they completely mastered the air for more than 150 million years before any other organisms evolved the ability to fly or could chase them in the air."
"There is a fundamental reason to use six legs. With six legs it is possible to translate and rotate in all three directions. Also, six-legged creatures can resist forces and torques in all directions. The stability of six legs is well known in the field of robotics."
"Upside down walking on inverted surfaces is possible because insects are so small that the forces of surface tension and cohesion are proportionally greater. Attachment to both smooth and rough surfaces is improved by a variety of microscopic adaptions at the tip of the insect foot, including claws, hairy pads and adhesive secretions."
"Mass extinctions appear to be periodic and repeat on a somewhat cyclical basis. On average, it looks as if an extinction event of varying intensity occurs about once every twenty-six million years. Granted, this could just be a coincidence, but it prompted scientists to speculate about how and why such events might regularly repeat. The dominant notion is that the earth is getting hit by asteroids, and that something out there with gravitational pull is affecting their stable orbits, as well as the orbits of comets, on a cyclical basis, about once every twenty-six million years. Perhaps either a remote small planet or dark star with a broad twenty-six-million-year orbit perturbs them whenever it passes near to our solar system."
"Maybe it's perilous to divide the history of life into separate ages, but in this case perhaps we can indeed pick one singular moment when the Palaeozoic era came to an end. I'd choose the particular day when the final trilobite died. What other creature better symbolizes the entire era than the trilobite?"
"One might try to rationalize this situation by thinking that there are millions of insects, so why would it matter if any of them are lost? Some might think, who cares if one fly or bee goes extinct, if that fly or bee belongs to a species that has not been catalogued? But what if that fly - or bee, or wasp, or beetle - were a specialized pollinator of an epiphytic plant? The fall of that one insect species might cause a subsequent loss of plant species, and also of other insects that depends on them." (cascade effect)
"Each living species is unique. Each fills a distinctive ecological role, and each encodes, in its genes, some qualities not found in other species."
"Setting aside the utilitarian perspective, living species are also intrinsically interesting simply because they exist."

[Victor Levine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surprisingly accessible account of the history of life on earth. Humans are shown to be egocentric interpreters of fossilized evidence. Shaw details the roles that "bugs" and other micro-organisms have played in evolution. As a lifelong amateur entomologist, I was thrilled that the narrative went far beyond the pop culture stories of insect curiosities. Who knew that every state has an official state fossil? Why oil was was only formed during one era? Why dinosaurs grew wings (to catch insects!)? Why insects don't live in the ocean? Why the age of fishes is a misnomer? The list of revelations goes on and on. The author is an authority on parasitic wasps, but his years of scientific research hasn't dulled his wit. A basic understanding of insect orders will enrich the reading experience, but the frequent wry commentary asides are easily understood. A worthy compliment to Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel, Gavin Menzies' 1421, and other reinterpretations of history.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

So first off, if you don't like bugs (especially wasps) to some degree I wouldn't recommend this. Reading some of the numbers off to my husband was probably not wise, as he was very uncomfortable with them. If you do enjoy insects though I really do recommend this. I will admit on my sleepier days it did put me to sleep but on the whole it was a fascinating and insightful read.
Scott Richard Shaw has a great conversational tone with his writing that really makes it approachable. He also has a genuine excitement for his subject matter that carries through as well, especially for his wasps - a clearly favored topic. I'd definitely read more from him and I'll be seeking out more buggy books in the future, they're so fascinating and especially the evolutionary history. It really makes you appreciate the little guys and gals.

[Elentarri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an interesting look at the evolution and rise of insects from the Cambrian to the present day. Professor Shaw details the roles that arthropods, and more specifically insects, have played in evolution and how these creatures affected the evolution of plants and other animal species. He takes a look at why oil was was only formed during the Carboniferous era? Why dinosaurs grew wings (to catch insects!)? Why insects don't live in the ocean? Why the age of fishes is a misnomer? I also found the author's "Buggy Universe Hypothesis" rather interesting.

The book is easy to read but makes extensive use of scientific insect terminology, so if that bothers you, this is not a book for you.

[Leftjab · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an excellent book, but I found it a bit thick for the layman. It could be called "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Insect Evolution but Were Afraid to Ask." (And I wasn't into the author's poetry either.)

But seriously, it does put humanity in its place quite well. And I felt that the conclusive chapter (as with every science-minded book that I've been reading for the past five years) regarding climate change and the next extinction event makes a solid point that if there is any other sort of intelligent life in the universe, it would most likely be insectoid. Makes sense.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written, well-researched book covering both entomology and evolutionary biology. It does a great job describing the lifestyle of a diverse range of insects and arthropods, as well as the evolutionary arms race of how many groups of insects came to be; the author does a great job of putting in this in the context of the geological history of the Earth, including how the insects co-evolved with land plants, and in that sense, the book has the added side benefit of providing an accessible history of Earth, especially in the descriptions of major extinction events.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author's over-eager attempts at populism were a little off-putting. I think that he could have given his readership a little more credit at being able to understand things from a more technical perspective, given some explication. Still, pretty interesting. I wished he'd taken a broader view, rather than using the lens of history to slowly zoom in on his chosen research speciality (parasitic wasps).

[Carl D · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used to think bugs were bad …

… because I worked in digital systems. But Shaw’s superb, informative book on insects has taught me better. Shaw sheds a lot of light on Earthly evolution. He writes with clarity and passion, from a base of seemingly enormous knowledge. I think we should excuse his concern regarding Earth’s ‘most important’ life forms, and harvest the great value in his superb book. Read it!

[Boris Grozev · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book presents a history of the evolution of insects. It starts with a discussion on how species are defined and classified, and then proceeds chronologically through the geological periods, with roughly a chapter on each. While the main topic is insects, each chapter provides the necessary context about the environment (the other forms of life, the geology).

[Ewa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad and quite pleasant to read but rather for absolute beginners in the matter. For a laymen with some knowledge already about insect philogeny may be dissapointing and far too superficial. I wish there would be more for example about my favorite group Dipterans, who are mentioned on only 5 pages while dinosaurs on many, many more.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why are there bugs? How did they evolve? Why are there so many species? This well-written book will answer these questions and many more. The journey takes us as far as the extinction of the dinosaurs. Here is a scientist with a sense of humor ... and he throws in a poem he wrote as well. The last two chapters are speculation about the future.

[Michael Blackmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice overview of the evolution of our crawling friends. Very readable style and I not only learned some things, but it helped build some context for the information nicely. Good science and a good book.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally, a book on the evolutionary history of insects! Learn about cute insect precursors such as human-sized scorpion-like Eurypterids, leggy 6 foot long Carboniferous Period Millipedes and the nasty habits of parasitic wasps. Everything is here to warm the hearts of armchair entomologists!

[Yanick Punter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as I hoped it would be. Here is a spindle diagram for those who are into it:

[Last Ranger · Rating 5 out of 5]

The First Steps:

From the earliest invasion of land, to today's uncounted millions, the Arthropods have dominated our planet. On land the "jointed foot" clan is mostly represented by the insects and this is their story. In "Planet of the Bugs" biologist Scott Richard Shaw takes the reader on the ultimate field trip; back to those first steps, through the long eons of deep time and forward to our modern world, for an in depth look on how the insects have come to rule the landscape. For me, this was a very satisfying read on paleontology and evolutionary biology with the focus on insects and related Arthropods. If you are a dedicated science reader you may find yourself covering some familiar ground, just told from a different viewpoint. The author's writing is, for the most part, geared for the layman reader with less technical jargon but, out of necessity, you will find plenty of scientific names for the geologic ages and the insects discussed (many of them have no common names). Dr. Shaw has spent his career studying insects, both modern and fossil forms, so any speculation he does is based on his extensive knowledge of this field. In gathering material for "Planet of the Bugs", and his own personal research, Dr Shaw was aided by several of his students and with the collaboration of various colleagues from around the world. I especially liked his writeup on the Yanayacu Cloud Forrest of Ecuador and of the many specialists who work at the research station there. This excellent book is not just about bugs, it's also about geological time and how all life forms change to fit into a constantly changing environment. Covered too is the human impact on our biosphere and what the future may hold for, not only insects but for all life forms--- including Man. Written in clear layman friendly proses, with just a touch of humor, "Planet of the Bugs" is well worth the time of anyone interested on how our world work and how small changes can lead to unforeseen results. I highly recommend this book! I had no technical or downloading problems with this Kindle edition.

Last Ranger

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scott Richard Shaw's "Planet of Bugs" examines how insects coevolved and sometimes survived various geological eras. From nipping at the scaly hide of t-rex to burrowing in the shag of a wooly mastodon, our little friends were there. The book deals with how various bugs interacted with their environments, though the emphasis seems to be on morphology. There's a tendency in this scientific subgenre to go for the "gross-out" and dwell on the kinds of details of reproduction and predation that make the layman recoil (see Carl Zimmer's "Parasite Rex"), but Dr. Shaw mostly resists the temptation, despite his field of particular study being the wasp (and there are some seriously *nasty* wasps out there, and woe betide the roach who gets dragged back to one of their burrows). And while his emphasis is on the Earth, there is a postscript on exobiology where the author allows that the bug might be a great biological blueprint across multiple planets.

I usually find the subject quite fascinating, but the author, while knowledgeable and pure of intent, somehow lacks an engaging style. The book might have benefited from a co-author, or someone to help organize Shaw's thoughts (a couple TAs perhaps?). He also tends toward pedantry at times. I understand the tendency for an expert in bugs to bemoan the anthropocentric bent of the rest of us, but when it gets to the point when you're taking notes on how Pixar films over-anthropomorphize insects (which he admits to doing), you might be a little too shatterpated to be teaching the undergrads anymore, and should maybe be given emeritus status and shuttled off to a nice cottage to catch butterflies in your dotage. This is just one man's take, though. With photos.

[Costin Manda · Rating 2 out of 5]

When do children lose their rubbernecked quality? asks Scott Richard Shaw when talking about little children fascinated by bugs. It's a valid question for him, because Planet of the Bugs feels like a an eight year old in a toy store, switching attention from toy to another without purpose or sense, talking excitedly about each of them randomly and abandoning them in the middle of the story to start telling another.

It's not like the content of the book doesn't have the potential to be interesting, the author went to a lot of places and read a lot of material, as an enthusiast does, but with absolutely no narrative thread and no structure to the chapters, Planet of the Bugs serves neither as an anecdotal journey in the world of insects and spiders and the like, nor as a possible reference piece. I mean, even Shaw's reason to get into arthropods feels like a boring version of the Spiderman origin story. I am paraphrasing here: "One day I stumbled upon a bug and from then on I was hooked. It was a hook beetle, you see!".

Bottom line: I really wanted to like this book, but it was just not well written.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the second book I bought from the University of Chicago Press, and describes the natural history of insect life on earth through every geologic era. It also describes Earth's five mass extinctions, and which insect species survived.

According to the author, the mass extinction that wiped out the largest number of insect species happened at the end of the Permian (concluding the Paleozoic Era), and also wiped out the last of the Trilobites through runaway global warming, although plate tectonics was the culprit triggering volcanic eruptions in Siberia that could've submerged the entire U.S. under a thousand feet of lava!

Ironically, humans in the modern era are wiping out more insects now than any other period since the end-Permian 252 million years ago! Thanks, guys! 😫

It would've been astonishing to see dragonflies with three-foot wingspans flying around during that unusual moment of the Paleozoic Era.

This tour of insect life over the past 600 million years was fascinating and unforgettable! ❤️

[Edith Z · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an awesome book!!! It covers, chronologically, the evolution of bugs beginning from single-cellular microbes to the present-day (well, the present day loss of bugs). I now realize that the Earth is really a planet of the bugs: insects outnumber other animal species in so many ways, and their small size, small niches, and shorter generations make them incredibly successful in evolution. They are so diverse and have such intricate ecological roles. The author argues that bugs are the more "inevitable" types of organisms (alongside plants) on the earth and other planets. I liked the writing style: his voice is authoritative but filled with wonder and admiration at the world of bugs, and that feeling was contagious.

I did wish there had been more on spiders, worms, and other "bugs", but that's probably for another book. This one really covers a lot considering its small size because bugs are so ecologically fundamental.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It does a nice job covering the evolution of insects and how they fit into our lives and the various niches of the environment. It has an appropriate level of technical detail without requiring biochemistry backgrounds or losing the reader who doesn't quite care. It's not dry, and has a very human element to it. You can share the author's love of the diversity and complexity of how insects have adapted in different ways, and I found numerous sections filled with fascinating facets. I find these types of books fairly rare: a rich level of depth and detail on an aspect of our world which is all around us, summarizing numerous man-aeons of research and work, with a pleasant and enjoyable style that is fun to read. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's for a casual reader or non-scientifically-minded individual, but I really enjoyed it.

[Serdar Erenler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Böcekler üzerine uzmanlaşmış bir bilimadamının, memeliler üzerinden aktarılan hayatın başlangıcı ve türlerin değişimi anlatısına isyanı diyebileceğimiz bir kitap.
İlk canlılardan itibaren dünya üzerinde yer alan ve günümüz dünyasının oluşmasını sağlayan böceklerin önemini okuduktan sonra anlıyor insan.
Dünya üzerinde ormanların ve bitkilerin yayılması, bitki ve canlıların çürüyerek doğada yok olması, böceklerin ve diğer hayvanların birbirlerine bağlı olarak evrimleşmeleri… gibi birbiriyle bağlantılı bir çok konuda çok bilgilendirici bir eser.
Aynı zamanda çok zor bir konuyu akıcı bir şekilde okuyucuya sunabilmiş yazar.
Okurken arada telefondan bahsi geçen hayvanların resimlerine bakmak çok faydalı oluyor.
Biyolojiye ya da evrime ilgi duyanların okuması lazım.

[CJ Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Focuses largely on pre-cenozoic eras for the science-y talk, generally uses the cenozoic as either links to previous eras or anecdotes. Good reading for the lay entomologist. He studies insects, parasitic wasps particularly, and is obviously very proud of that. But this book was very enlightening to me. I had no knowledge of insect/arthropod impact on early Earth history, and there's a lot of it. Did you know that insects pre-date flowing plants in evolution and in fact probably made it possible for them to exist? I did not. Also stay tuned to the last chapter for Bugs In Space.