Beetle Battles: One Scientist's Journey of Adventure and Discovery

by Douglas J. Emlen

Overview

Join scientist Doug Emlen on his quest to find out why an elusive type of beetle grows weapons that are enormous for its body size.

What does it take to be a scientist in the field?

Doug Emlen is a scientist. He studies beetles.

Specifically, he studies the evolution of beetle weapons—how their horns and armor change to better suit them in different environments.

This book starts with a mystery: Doug wanted to know why a particular type of beetle developed a massive evolutionary weapon. He wanted to know how these changes happened and what advantages these enormous weapons gave the tiny dung beetles.

So, he went to visit.

Part travel diary and part scientific exploration, Beetle Battles takes you deep into the South American rainforest to monitor beetles in their own habitat. Packed with color photographs, extensive back matter, and entertaining anecdotes, this book will make beetle fans out of all its young readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250147110
Publisher:	Roaring Brook Press
Publication date:	12/24/2019
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	1150L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Doug Emlen is the Director of Organismal Biology, Ecology, and Evolution at the University of Montana. His adult book, Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle, won the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, and his textbook, Evolution: Making Sense of Life (co-authored with award-winning journalist Carl Zimmer), is presently adopted by more than 250 universities and colleges. He starred in the NOVA documentary Extreme Animal Weapons. Mr. Emlen lives in Montana with his family (and a whole bunch of beetles).

Editorial Reviews

2019-10-23
A biologist's thoughts on the causes and courses of arms races—in the natural world and elsewhere.

Recasting his adult-oriented Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle (2014) for a younger audience, Emlen focuses on dung beetles, which he studied for many years in locales from Panama to the Serengeti. He describes in fascinating detail how he designed studies and experiments that proved not only that horned varieties fought individual duels over females underground, but that they also produced offspring with larger or smaller weapons through a process of natural selection. It's a great account of science in the field and in action…until, that is, he suddenly switches course, trying to extend his findings to the history of human warfare with a claim that "arms races" are effectively the same. This leads to some questionable, not to mention sexist, claims, notably that armored "knights errant" fought each other for "forty or more years of continuous battle" to win "the hand of an heiress" and that the Cold War was, like those battling beetles, a one-on-one duel writ large. More defensibly, he also discusses how weapons systems, natural and high-tech alike, become ever more unwieldy until rendered obsolete by "cheaters," such as, in the case of humans, guerillas and "cyberhackers" who refuse to fight face to face. Maps, paintings, and photos, many drawn from the previous edition, complement the text.

Entertaining and instructive, if more than a bit shaky in its historical reaches (source note, index) (Nonfiction. 11-14)

Kirkus Reviews