While no one – certainly not me – would likely deny the sheer delight that can overtake one upon seeing a particularly colorful butterfly upon the wing, I have always been more generally partial to the larger but less popular portion of the Lepidoptera – the moths. So when a few months ago I noticed a reference to a forthcoming new volume on their natural history from Princeton University Press, my curiosity was naturally very much piqued.
Part of The Lives of the Natural World series, The Lives of Moths joins The Lives of Fungi (about which I’ve written in a separate Newly Noted entry) as one of its two inaugural volumes.
In The Lives of Moths: A Natural History of Our Planet’s Moth Life, authors Dr. Andrei Sourakov and Rachel Warren Chadd begin the presentation of their title subject with foundational chapters on such topics as an overview of what moths are, how the are systematically organized, and how they reproduce. Following this, the authors move on to overviews of moths in different biomes, including profiles of exemplary and interesting relevant species.
While I’ve read many books about moths over the years, I am quite looking forward to delving into the pages of this new one in order to discover not only information new to me on the subject but also to learn how the authors have approached their overview of the less commonly understood but very large portion of the Order Lepidoptera.
