If asked to suggest an author who would be the most likely to be successful in setting the record straight in regard to the public reputation of a much-maligned and widely unpopular insect, I would immediately recommend Richard Jones. After all, given what he was able to do with mosquitoes, and common household “pests,” to say nothing of his writings about feces, it stands to reason that he could quite likely make even the most vitriolic haters of any given creature reconsider their opinions.
Therefore I am very keen to discover what he has to say about the members of the Hymenoptera who haven’t (yet) been so widely recognized for all the benefits they provide to both humans as well as the planet as a whole; I mean, of course, the wasps.
In Wasps, the most recent addition to the Reaktion Books Animal Series (distributed in the U.S. by University of Chicago Press), “Bugman” Jones delves into the biological, ecological, and sociological aspects of these much feared but remarkably important insects to show “exactly why wasps are worthy of greater understanding and appreciation.”
