Book description
For the first time ever, a DVD featuring exclusive video and audio
material accompanies the latest New Naturalist volume, a multimedia
first for the series.
Ted Benton offers a comprehensive account of the appearance,
variations, behaviour, habitat, life-cycles and distribution of all the
native British species of bush-crickets, crickets, groundhoppers and
grasshoppers. Many details from direct field observation are included,
which are published here for the first time.
With up-to-date information on newly arrived and recently established
species, as well as long-established non-native species - such as the
house cricket and greenhouse camel cricket - Benton pays special
attention to a key area of evolutionary thought that has stimulated an
international research focus on grasshoppers and crickets. Recent
approaches to mating and reproduction emphasise differences and even
conflicts of interest between males and females. The sexually selected
adaptations and counter-adaptations to such conflicts of reproductive
interest are used to explain the astonishing diversity of reproductive
behaviour exhibited by grasshoppers and crickets: male territorial
behaviour, coercive mating, complex songs, elaborate courtship
performances, the donation of edible 'nuptial gifts', the reversal of
sex-roles, mate-guarding, keeping of 'harems' and, in a few species,
parental care of the offspring. These chapters provide an introduction
to the theoretical issues and an overview of many case studies drawn
from research on orthopterans from across the world (but including
British species where relevant).
A unique DVD features many aspects of the behaviour of nearly all
British species, including song, conflict, courtship behaviour, sex-role
reversal and egg laying.
The book is lavishly illustrated with colour photographs and line
drawings, covering all the British species (including immature stages in
most cases), key habitats and many aspects of behaviour. '[…] Ted
Benton's entomological opus Grasshoppers & Crickets led me into the
weird world of British orthoptera, with their edible nuptial gifts,
"mate-guarding", harems and extraordinarily complex songs. No
field or meadow will seem or sound the same again.' Robert Macfarlane,
'Books of the Year 2012', Guardian
'An outstanding contribution […] The DVD a groundbreaking achievement.'
British Wildlife
Praise for the New Naturalist series:
'The series is an amazing achievement.'
The Times Literary Supplement
'The books are glorious to own.'
Independent Ted Benton is Professor of Sociology at the University of
Essex, and has special interest in and numerous publications on
socio-economic and political aspects of environmental change. He has
been a passionate field naturalist since childhood, and is an active
field recorder and photographer, with particular interest in several
insect orders. He has previously written a New Naturalist volume on
Bumblebees (2006).
