Insect Ecology: Behavior, Populations and Communities. P. W.Price, R. F.Denno, M. D.Eubanks, D. L.Finke & I.Kaplan, 2011, 816 pp. Cambridge University Press, UK. ISBN 9780521834889, Hardcover, £100.00. ISBN 9780521542609, Paperback, £42.99.

Insect Ecology: Behavior, Populations and Communities, by Peter Price, Robert Denno, Micky Eubanks, Deborah Finke, and Ian Kaplan, is a new edition of the venerable textbook first published by Price in 1975 and last revised in 1997. According to the book's Preface, the untimely death of Denno during the preparation of this new edition prompted the involvement of Eubanks, Kaplan, and Finke, all former students of Denno's. The result of this collaboration is an extensive revision of the previous edition of the textbook that succeeds both as an up-to-date introduction to the field of insect ecology for students and as a resource for practicing insect ecologists and applied ecologists. Insect Ecology is divided into 15 chapters distributed among six major sections. Part I (Chapter 1) begins, appropriately, by documenting the tremendous diversity of insects, describing the features of insects in the context of insect diversity, and introducing some basic terms and concepts. Part II contains two chapters on behavioral ecology, the first of which surveys the behaviors associated with the various activities in which insects engage, such as feeding and mating, and the second of which is devoted to the evolution and ecology of social insects. Part III of the book (Chapters 4–8) covers species interactions and is easily the longest section of the book. Chapter 4 is an overview of plant–herbivore interactions in general and plant defenses and plant defense hypotheses in particular. Chapter 5 covers competition, amensalism, and facilitation and includes an interesting discussion of how induced responses in plants impact competitive interactions. Chapter 6, on mutualisms, includes some detailed natural history as well as a more theoretical treatment of mutualism. Chapters 7 and 8 deal with predator–prey interactions and parasitism, respectively; Chapter 8, in particular, is interesting for a broad and inclusive perspective on parasitism that encompasses herbivory as well as more traditional types of parasite–host interactions (a perspective previously advocated by Price). Parts IV ('Population ecology', Chapters 9–11), V ('Food webs and communities', Chapters 12–13), and VI ('Broad patterns in nature', Chapters 14–15) systematically expand the scope of inquiry and discussion from a focus on species interactions to population-level phenomena, then to the structure and formation of communities, and finally to discussions of biodiversity and ecosystem-level processes. Chapter 9 consists of a relatively brief treatment of demography, Chapter 10 compares life history strategies of various insects and groups of insects, and Chapter 11 focuses on major patterns in population dynamics and the mechanisms responsible for these patterns. Chapter 12 discusses niche theory and community formation, organization, and genetics, whereas Chapter 13 is an interesting and up-to-date chapter on multitrophic interactions. Finally, Chapter 14 covers biodiversity and large-scale patterns in species abundance, and Chapter 15 includes discussions of insect paleobiology, the involvement of insects in ecosystem-level processes, and climate change. Insect Ecology is explicitly designed for use in a semester-long course targeted to advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Chapters end with several study aids: a summary, a list of provocative questions and discussion topics, and recommended further reading. Each chapter also includes an 'Applications' section that relates the content of the chapter to some of its applications, mostly in agriculture and pest management but also in other areas such as conservation biology. A comprehensive glossary is also provided to assist students just beginning their study of insect ecology. The text is sprinkled liberally with figures and tables that enhance the reading experience. The text itself is written in a not highly technical manner that is appropriate for advanced undergraduates and that only rarely sacrifices precision for readability (e.g., the use of the term 'body odor' to describe the mix of volatile organic compounds released by plants). The approach to the subject matter taken in many of the chapters also lends itself to teaching. Often, discussions of important ideas in insect ecology begin with the historical origins of the idea, followed by a brief description of the historical responses to the idea and an evaluation of evidence for and against the idea. The section of Chapter 7 on predator–prey dynamics, for example, begins with the Lotka–Volterra equations before proceeding to a discussion of the ecological factors that provide stability to these models and better predict population dynamics; Chapter 4, on plant–herbivore interactions, includes a long treatment of historically important plant defense hypotheses, such as the growth/differentiation balance hypothesis, the growth rate hypothesis, and various manifestations of the optimal defense hypothesis before presenting a discussion on the need to integrate and synthesize these various hypotheses; a discussion of trophic cascades in Chapter 13 is presented in the context of Hairston, Smith, and Slobodkin's seminal 1960 paper (the 'green world' hypothesis; Hairston et al., 1960). Although this approach often results in large amount of space devoted to ideas with marginal support or to hypotheses that have been largely rejected (e.g., the carbon/nutrient balance hypothesis; Hamilton et al., 2008), it provides students with a perspective on the historical development of the field of insect ecology and on the workings of real science, in which hypotheses are in a state of perpetual debate and revision. Although impressively broad, coverage is in some respects uneven. For example, the relatively brief treatment of the roles of insects in ecosystem processes suffers by comparison to the detailed treatment of species interactions and population-level processes earlier in the book. Likewise, nutrition is conspicuously under-represented. Over the past decade, a large body of research has begun to unravel the ways that nutrients influence the behavior, development, and life history of animals, and to link organisms to populations and communities. Considering the prominent role that insects have played in this research, it was a surprise in a book titled Insect Ecology: Behavior, Populations and Communities to find 'macronutrient' mentioned only on one page, with no index entries for 'nutrient', 'protein', 'carbohydrate', 'fat', or 'nutrient balance'. 'Nutritional ecology' is indexed for a single page, which rather discusses ecological stoichiometry. As '…much of ecology concerns the behaviors involved with food, feeding and foraging' (p. 37), there is an argument that students of insect ecology should receive a better grounding in nutrition. Despite being tailored for use in teaching, Insect Ecology will also be of tremendous use to researchers working in areas related to insect ecology. The book includes over 120 pages of references, a great many of them recent, making it an outstanding entry into the primary insect ecology literature. Moreover, although integration of the applied literature into the main bodies of the chapters is somewhat uneven, the 'Applications' sections for the most part nicely connect basic insect ecology to its applications in landscape and pest management. Thus, Insect Ecology will prove valuable not only as a textbook for graduate students and advanced undergraduates but also as a reference for practicing ecologists and, especially, applied ecologists who want or need a reminder of the ecological foundations of pest management.