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Moths: A Complete Guide to Biology and Behavior
Accessible introduction to the biology, life cycle, natural history, and classification of moths
Moths are a crucial insect group encompassing more than 160,000 species, and they are among the most ancient of Earth's inhabitants, with some fossils believed to be 190 million years old. This richly illustrated guide to their biology, evolution, and history demonstrates the incredible diversity of these winged insects and reveals the ruthless survival tactics used by some--including blood-sucking moths, cannibalism in the cocoon, and carnivorous caterpillars. The book also explores their extraordinary life cycle, charting development from egg to larva to cocoon to airborne adult, as well as the surprising variations of color and wing patterns that moths have evolved. Engaging narrative and specially commissioned photographs of moth specimens make A Complete Guide to Biology and Behavior a perfect gift book for scientists and science enthusiasts alike.
Moths are a crucial insect group encompassing more than 160,000 species, and they are among the most ancient of Earth's inhabitants, with some fossils believed to be 190 million years old. This richly illustrated guide to their biology, evolution, and history demonstrates the incredible diversity of these winged insects and reveals the ruthless survival tactics used by some--including blood-sucking moths, cannibalism in the cocoon, and carnivorous caterpillars. The book also explores their extraordinary life cycle, charting development from egg to larva to cocoon to airborne adult, as well as the surprising variations of color and wing patterns that moths have evolved. Engaging narrative and specially commissioned photographs of moth specimens make A Complete Guide to Biology and Behavior a perfect gift book for scientists and science enthusiasts alike.
208 pages, Paperback
Published October 29, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 12, 2021
For decades, botanists have recognized that plants under attack by herbivores are not completely helpless. When assaulted by leaf-munching caterpillars, for example, at least some plants open their stomata and release herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) into the air. These HIPVs can alert neighboring plants to bolster their defenses in preparation for an imminent attack by increasing the concentration of compounds that make their leaves less palatable. In other cases, HIPVs may attract wasps that are exquisitely sensitive to the distress chemicals. The wasps seek out the source of the chemical signal and find the offending caterpillar that then serves as a living host for the parasitoid wasp’s carnivorous larvae.
However, in January 2021, Po-An Lin and his colleagues at Pennsylvania State University published a paper revealing that the cutworm caterpillars of the cosmopolitan agricultural pest Helicovera zea (variously called the corn earworm, the cotton boll worm or the tomato fruitworm) have evolved a strategy to thwart plants’ defenses (Po‐An Lin, et al. 2021. Silencing the alarm: an insect salivary enzyme closes plant stomata and inhibits volatile release. New Phytologist. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.17214). As they eat the leaves of tomato plants, the caterpillars secrete a salivary enzyme, glucose oxidase, that causes the plants to close their stomata, thereby inhibiting the release of HIPVs. The moth larvae’s ability to silence the plant’s alarm signal is just a single example of the myriad and endlessly fascinating strategies that moths have evolved to allow them to thrive. Authors David Lees and Alberto Zilli catalogue hundreds of such survival strategies in their engaging (and sometimes maddening) book.
Because human beings are diurnal creatures, most people are more familiar with the largely day-flying members of the order Lepidoptera (scale-winged insects): the butterflies. However, entomologists have only described about 18,500 species of butterflies in seven families, whereas they have identified nearly eight times as many moths (138,800 species) in 130 families. Many, but hardly all, moths are nocturnal and escape most people’s notice except when they cluster around a porch light at night (for reasons unknown, by the way). Clearly, the moths have gotten short-shrift and this book sets out to rectify that disparity.
In keeping with its subtitle, the book focuses on moths’ diverse biological and behavioral adaptations. To provide a foundation for their discussion, though, the authors begin by detailing adult anatomy. They devote a significant part of their discussion to a consideration of the wings, since the moths have diversified as a result of two principal factors: the structure of their wings and their feeding associations with flowering plants. The authors follow their review of anatomy with a discussion of the three life stages leading to the adult: egg, larva (or caterpillar) and pupa. While the anatomical and life stage chapters present generalized overviews of these topics, the authors also highlight some of the variability demonstrated by atypical and unusual species, a format that they continue throughout the text.
The earliest Lepidoptera fossils date from about 190 million years ago. These ancestral moths began to exploit terrestrial ecosystems when they branched off from the caddisflies (order Trichoptera) whose larvae and pupae are aquatic. Because moths evolved before the appearance of seed-bearing plants, the ancestral species’ larvae likely fed on soil fungi and liverworts and the adults relied on fern spores as a food source. The appearance of cone-bearing plants presented new resources to the early Lepidoptera, but it was with the evolution and rapid diversification of angiosperms (flowering plants) during the Cretaceous that moths could really proliferate. Moths quickly evolved sophisticated ecological relationships with flowering plants in both their larval and adult life stages. Moths’ ability to exploit a wide diversity of plants as food sources—and the reaction of some plants to being exploited by moths—is among the book’s major themes and provides some of the most rewarding reading.
Moths are most vulnerable in their larval and adult life stages. It is no wonder, then, that they have evolved seemingly endless strategies to minimize predation. The chapter dubbed “moth warfare” may be the most interesting in the book, as the authors first consider threats to the insects’ survival, and then reveal some of the physical, chemical, visual, and acoustic defenses in moths’ arsenal.
The book also treats mating, taxonomy, evolution, biogeography and moths’ interactions with humans.
It would be hard to finish reading this book and not come away with a deeper appreciation for moths. Every reader will gain new insights and only the most jaded will fail to discover dozens of truly astonishing new details about the Lepidoptera. However, I found it difficult to pinpoint the audience for the book. The soft cover, 7.5” x 10” format, clever chapter titles, generous color photographs, and generally breezy writing style suggest that the authors intended the book to introduce the moths to a general audience. On the other hand, the constant mention of moth scientific families and superfamilies interrupts the rhythm of the writing. Most general readers likely will find these citations distracting and off-putting. In addition, the authors mention by name entomologists who have worked on various aspects of moth biology and taxonomy, almost as if they are friends. Yet, these researchers, perhaps well known among lepidopterists, will mean nothing to a general reader.
If the authors intended instead to address a more professional audience, the book probably would not satisfy researchers or academics. There are no references (though the appendix does include a list of suggested readings). Furthermore, the text includes too much information that professional entomologists would find insignificant or irrelevant.
With the single exception of a stylized image of an adult Hummingbird Hawkmoth, all of the images included in the book are photographs. In some cases, it is difficult to appreciate the feature that the photograph is illustrating, especially when the feature is presented disassociated from the entire animal. A drawing, especially of some of the anatomical features, would have been preferable to a photograph. Similarly, the authors could have positioned arrows on some of the photographs to indicate precisely the feature they were illustrating.
However, in January 2021, Po-An Lin and his colleagues at Pennsylvania State University published a paper revealing that the cutworm caterpillars of the cosmopolitan agricultural pest Helicovera zea (variously called the corn earworm, the cotton boll worm or the tomato fruitworm) have evolved a strategy to thwart plants’ defenses (Po‐An Lin, et al. 2021. Silencing the alarm: an insect salivary enzyme closes plant stomata and inhibits volatile release. New Phytologist. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.17214). As they eat the leaves of tomato plants, the caterpillars secrete a salivary enzyme, glucose oxidase, that causes the plants to close their stomata, thereby inhibiting the release of HIPVs. The moth larvae’s ability to silence the plant’s alarm signal is just a single example of the myriad and endlessly fascinating strategies that moths have evolved to allow them to thrive. Authors David Lees and Alberto Zilli catalogue hundreds of such survival strategies in their engaging (and sometimes maddening) book.
Because human beings are diurnal creatures, most people are more familiar with the largely day-flying members of the order Lepidoptera (scale-winged insects): the butterflies. However, entomologists have only described about 18,500 species of butterflies in seven families, whereas they have identified nearly eight times as many moths (138,800 species) in 130 families. Many, but hardly all, moths are nocturnal and escape most people’s notice except when they cluster around a porch light at night (for reasons unknown, by the way). Clearly, the moths have gotten short-shrift and this book sets out to rectify that disparity.
In keeping with its subtitle, the book focuses on moths’ diverse biological and behavioral adaptations. To provide a foundation for their discussion, though, the authors begin by detailing adult anatomy. They devote a significant part of their discussion to a consideration of the wings, since the moths have diversified as a result of two principal factors: the structure of their wings and their feeding associations with flowering plants. The authors follow their review of anatomy with a discussion of the three life stages leading to the adult: egg, larva (or caterpillar) and pupa. While the anatomical and life stage chapters present generalized overviews of these topics, the authors also highlight some of the variability demonstrated by atypical and unusual species, a format that they continue throughout the text.
The earliest Lepidoptera fossils date from about 190 million years ago. These ancestral moths began to exploit terrestrial ecosystems when they branched off from the caddisflies (order Trichoptera) whose larvae and pupae are aquatic. Because moths evolved before the appearance of seed-bearing plants, the ancestral species’ larvae likely fed on soil fungi and liverworts and the adults relied on fern spores as a food source. The appearance of cone-bearing plants presented new resources to the early Lepidoptera, but it was with the evolution and rapid diversification of angiosperms (flowering plants) during the Cretaceous that moths could really proliferate. Moths quickly evolved sophisticated ecological relationships with flowering plants in both their larval and adult life stages. Moths’ ability to exploit a wide diversity of plants as food sources—and the reaction of some plants to being exploited by moths—is among the book’s major themes and provides some of the most rewarding reading.
Moths are most vulnerable in their larval and adult life stages. It is no wonder, then, that they have evolved seemingly endless strategies to minimize predation. The chapter dubbed “moth warfare” may be the most interesting in the book, as the authors first consider threats to the insects’ survival, and then reveal some of the physical, chemical, visual, and acoustic defenses in moths’ arsenal.
The book also treats mating, taxonomy, evolution, biogeography and moths’ interactions with humans.
It would be hard to finish reading this book and not come away with a deeper appreciation for moths. Every reader will gain new insights and only the most jaded will fail to discover dozens of truly astonishing new details about the Lepidoptera. However, I found it difficult to pinpoint the audience for the book. The soft cover, 7.5” x 10” format, clever chapter titles, generous color photographs, and generally breezy writing style suggest that the authors intended the book to introduce the moths to a general audience. On the other hand, the constant mention of moth scientific families and superfamilies interrupts the rhythm of the writing. Most general readers likely will find these citations distracting and off-putting. In addition, the authors mention by name entomologists who have worked on various aspects of moth biology and taxonomy, almost as if they are friends. Yet, these researchers, perhaps well known among lepidopterists, will mean nothing to a general reader.
If the authors intended instead to address a more professional audience, the book probably would not satisfy researchers or academics. There are no references (though the appendix does include a list of suggested readings). Furthermore, the text includes too much information that professional entomologists would find insignificant or irrelevant.
With the single exception of a stylized image of an adult Hummingbird Hawkmoth, all of the images included in the book are photographs. In some cases, it is difficult to appreciate the feature that the photograph is illustrating, especially when the feature is presented disassociated from the entire animal. A drawing, especially of some of the anatomical features, would have been preferable to a photograph. Similarly, the authors could have positioned arrows on some of the photographs to indicate precisely the feature they were illustrating.
June 1, 2021
An ambitious but well executed guide. Some of the things mentioned in here about moth behaviour certainly seem too strange to be true!
September 20, 2025
Shout out to my local library for letting me keep this for as long as it took me to finish it (no one else has requested it so). There is a ton of great information in this, but unfortunately, I have no idea who the intended audience is supposed to be. I’m not sure the authors did either.
The decision to write this at what I would call university-level difficulty is strange. It’s not really for a general audience. But it also assumes no prior significant knowledge of the topic (outside of some very basic biology like what DNA is). But it also preferentially uses scientific names, which is just an odd choice for a book for beginners. I have a degree in environmental science/natural resources, so I’m not new to biology by any means, but I only took one entomology class and it was more about beetles (I can only assume that I’m the closest person to a potential intended audience). The constant names of families and subfamilies and genera and species get exhausting when they mean nothing to you. I certainly know more of them now, but the main reason this took me so long is because I didn’t know them to begin with.
More importantly, I’m not sure how much the average reader cares. Personally, I wanted to learn more about moths, but knowing their taxonomy THAT well wasn’t really what I was going for. So many lists of families that do X that just completely went over my head. I certainly know a lot more about moths now, which I appreciate, but no I do not remember which moth families do what. And when I come up with fun facts to annoy my friends with based on this book, I’m not going to be including that because they don’t care either lol. Maybe this would be a good book for someone planning to become a lepidopterist?? But not already one… because they’ll already know all this stuff. I don’t think there’s a lot of overlap in the venn diagram between “people who don’t know most of this information” and “people who want to know all the scientific names of everything in long lists”.
Similarly, name dropping presumably accomplished lepidopterists is a weird choice for a book that can’t possibly be for lepidopterists. Give them credit in the bibliography absolutely, but what are these names going to mean for readers? Who is this book for??
The decision to write this at what I would call university-level difficulty is strange. It’s not really for a general audience. But it also assumes no prior significant knowledge of the topic (outside of some very basic biology like what DNA is). But it also preferentially uses scientific names, which is just an odd choice for a book for beginners. I have a degree in environmental science/natural resources, so I’m not new to biology by any means, but I only took one entomology class and it was more about beetles (I can only assume that I’m the closest person to a potential intended audience). The constant names of families and subfamilies and genera and species get exhausting when they mean nothing to you. I certainly know more of them now, but the main reason this took me so long is because I didn’t know them to begin with.
More importantly, I’m not sure how much the average reader cares. Personally, I wanted to learn more about moths, but knowing their taxonomy THAT well wasn’t really what I was going for. So many lists of families that do X that just completely went over my head. I certainly know a lot more about moths now, which I appreciate, but no I do not remember which moth families do what. And when I come up with fun facts to annoy my friends with based on this book, I’m not going to be including that because they don’t care either lol. Maybe this would be a good book for someone planning to become a lepidopterist?? But not already one… because they’ll already know all this stuff. I don’t think there’s a lot of overlap in the venn diagram between “people who don’t know most of this information” and “people who want to know all the scientific names of everything in long lists”.
Similarly, name dropping presumably accomplished lepidopterists is a weird choice for a book that can’t possibly be for lepidopterists. Give them credit in the bibliography absolutely, but what are these names going to mean for readers? Who is this book for??
May 6, 2023
The authors dive into hundreds of moth species, verbally and visually illustrating the diversity of this Order. I learned a lot, it was informative yet engaging.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews