Down Under and on Deadline

They're Down Under and on deadline.

Entomology professors Penny Gullan and Peter Cranston of the University of California, Davis, are finishing the fourth edition of their popular textbook, The Insects: An Outline of Entomology.

They're not in Davis, though. They're in their Canberra lab in Australia.

Canberra, the capital city of Australia, is located 170 miles southwest of Sydney and 400 miles northeast of Melbourne.

Their textbook is a veritable Who's Who and What's What of the study of insects.  One reviewer wrote:  "This established textbook continues to provide a comprehensive and stimulating introduction to insects, a group of animals that represent over half of the planet's biological diversity. It commences with a review of the significance of insects, their immense diversity and their patterns of distribution. Insects influence all of our activities, and in seeking to understand their success, the key features of insect anatomy, physiology, behaviour, ecology, phylogeny and evolution are identified by the authors."

Their book was also mentioned in a recent Smithsonian article featuring the Linnaean Games, a national insect trivia contest conducted at the annual Entomological Society of America meeting. In the Linnaean Games, teams of entomology students vie for top honors in a college-bowl-like competition.

Gullan and Cranston are noted systematic entomologists; they teach and research insect identification, distribution, evolution and ecology.

So, whether you want to know more about entomology or are planning a career in entomology, or are cramming for an insect trivia contest,  this book has it all. 

Writer Abigail Tucker of the Smithsonian described the Gullan-Cranston book as "classic" in her article, "Bugs, Brains and Trivia," about the Linnaean Games:

"To prepare, teams from universities across the country practice weekly, poring over classic texts like P.J. Gullan and P.S. Cranston’s The Insects, memorizing banks of recorded questions from previous games and reading journals to keep up to date with the latest in pesticide chemistry. They bone up on social entomology, medical entomology, ecology and the dreaded systematics, which includes insect phylogeny and evolution. They also work on speed and reflexes, slapping at the buzzer like they’d swat a vicious mosquito."