Anne Magurran

The overwhelming appeal of the concept of evolution through natural selection has focused the minds of generations of biologists on trends, and the similarities and differences between organisms that is grist to the mill of taxonomists. “To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, ‘Where is the imagination that has been lost in knowledge and where is the knowledge that has been lost in information?’ This book is an attempt to show that there is a language in the wings of butterflies and moths,” Howse argues. “This does not help us to understand why we see butterflies and moths as creatures that epitomise the beauty of nature, but it underlines what Darwin called the ‘grandeur’ of evolutionary theory.” “Many insects have evolved colourings and shapes which enable them to blend in with features of their feeding and resting places, as in camouflage, or to resemble closely other species of insect that harbour unpalatable toxins,” he says. But the book reveals how butterflies and moths have greatly developed these defensive strategies. Howse heaps praise on early keen observers of nature. “Much fascinating but neglected information about Lepidoptera is found in the writings of Victorian naturalists, starting with Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates,” he says. “I have also been inspired by the original approach of certain entomologists of the twentieth century such as Fabre, Hilton and the Hon. Miriam Rothschild.” He has particular praise for Rothschild. She “stands apart amongst entomologists, and the bases of many of my ideas have come from reading her publications,” he says. “Significantly, such people were not primary experimentalists, working in laboratories, but were the keenest of observers.” With the decline of so many species, often without clear and obvious reasons and often unnoticed, the role of such observers is of growing importance.