Insects and Wildlife: Arthropods and their Relationships with Wild Vertebrate Animals provides a comprehensive overview of the interrelationships of insects and wildlife. It serves as an introduction to insects and other arthropods for wildlife management and other vertebrate biology students, and emphasizes the importance of insects to wild vertebrate animals. The book emphasizes how insects exert important influences on wildlife habitat suitability and wildlife population sustainability, including their direct and indirect effects on wildlife health. Among the important topics covered are: the importance of insects as food items for vertebrate animals; the role of arthropods as determinants of ecosystem health and productivity; the ability of arthropods to transmit disease-causing agents; an overview of representative disease-causing agents transmitted by arthropods; arthropods as pests and parasites of vertebrates; the hazards to wildlife associated with using using pesticides to protect against insect damage; insect management using techniques other than pesticides; the importance of insect conservation and how insects influence wildlife conservation.

Also includes material on proturans, springtails, diplurans, harvestmen, scorpions, ticks, mites, centipedes, millipedes, crayfish, pillbugs, fairy, brine, tadpole, and clam shrimps, water fleas, and malacostracans.

Members of the insect class often get a bad rap. People swat at them, stomp on them, and go to great lengths to repel them. Though some insects are pests that spread disease, many are actually helpers, pollinating plants and eating other insects that wreak havoc. Investigate the world of insects and discover that many are a class act!

Book has remarkable close-up photos of 100 mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects found east of the Great Plains in North America with information about habitat, appearance, behavior and also a CD recording of commons songs, calls, or other sounds for each.

An enthusiastic, witty, and informative introduction to the world of insects and why we—and the planet we inhabit—could not survive without them. Insects comprise roughly half of the animal kingdom. They live everywhere—deep inside caves, 18,000 feet high in the Himalayas, inside computers, in Yellowstone’s hot springs, and in the ears and nostrils of much larger creatures. There are insects that have ears on their knees, eyes on their penises, and tongues under their feet. Most of us think life would be better without bugs. In fact, life would be impossible without them. Most of us know that we would not have honey without honeybees, but without the pinhead-sized chocolate midge, cocoa flowers would not pollinate. No cocoa, no chocolate. The ink that was used to write the Declaration of Independence was derived from galls on oak trees, which are induced by a small wasp. The fruit fly was essential to medical and biological research experiments that resulted in six Nobel prizes. Blowfly larva can clean difficult wounds; flour beetle larva can digest plastic; several species of insects have been essential to the development of antibiotics. Insects turn dead plants and animals into soil. They pollinate flowers, including crops that we depend on. They provide food for other animals, such as birds and bats. They control organisms that are harmful to humans. Life as we know it depends on these small creatures. With ecologist Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson as our capable, entertaining guide into the insect world, we’ll learn that there is more variety among insects than we can even imagine and the more you learn about insects, the more fascinating they become. Buzz, Sting, Bite is an essential introduction to the little creatures that make the world go round.

Includes pictures and activities about the insects of Texas.