Evolution of the insects / Эволюция насекомых

Insects are the most diverse group of organisms to appear in the 3-billion-year history of life on Earth, and the most ecologically dominant animals on land. This book chronicles, for the first time, the complete evolutionary history of insects: their living diversity, relationships, and 400 million years of fossils. Whereas other volumes have focused on either living species or fossils, this is the first comprehensive synthesis of all aspects of insect evolution. Current estimates of phylogeny are used to interpret the 400-million-year fossil record of insects, their extinctions, and radiations. Introductory sections include the living species, diversity of insects, methods of reconstructing evolutionary relationships, basic insect structure, and the diverse modes of insect fossilization and major fossil deposits. Major sections cover the relationships and evolution of each order of hexapod. The book also chronicles major episodes in the evolutionary history of insects: their modest beginnings in the Devonian, the origin of wings hundreds of millions of years before pterosaurs and birds, the impact that mass extinctions and the explosive radiation of angiosperms had on insects, and how insects evolved the most complex societies in nature.

Evolution of the Insects is beautifully illustrated with more than 900 photo- and electron micrographs, drawings, diagrams, and field photographs, many in full color and virtually all original. The book will appeal to anyone engaged with insect diversity: professional entomologists and students, insect and fossil collectors, and naturalists. <...>