Once in a great while, as the "New York Times" noted recently, a naturalist writes a book that changes the way people look at the living world. John James Audubon s "Birds of America, " published in 1838, was one. Roger Tory Peterson s 1934 "Field Guide to the Birds" was another. How does such insight into nature develop?

Pioneering a new niche in the study of plants and animals in their native habitat, " Field Notes on Science and Nature" allows readers to peer over the shoulders and into the notebooks of a dozen eminent field workers, to study firsthand their observational methods, materials, and fleeting impressions.

What did George Schaller note when studying the lions of the Serengeti? What lists did Kenn Kaufman keep during his 1973 big year ? How does Piotr Naskrecki use relational databases and electronic field notes? In what way is Bernd Heinrich s approach truly Thoreauvian, in E. O. Wilson s view? Recording observations in the field is an indispensable scientific skill, but researchers are not generally willing to share their personal records with others. Here, for the first time, are reproductions of actual pages from notebooks. And in essays abounding with fascinating anecdotes, the authors reflect on the contexts in which the notes were taken.

Covering disciplines as diverse as ornithology, entomology, ecology, paleontology, anthropology, botany, and animal behavior, "Field Notes "offers specific examples that professional naturalists can emulate to fine-tune their own field methods, along with practical advice that amateur naturalists and students can use to document their adventures.

Barry Bolton's "New General Catalogue of the Ants of the World," published in 1995, was the first attempt in more than one hundred years to collect all taxonomic decisions for ants worldwide, including extinct as well as extant taxa. One reviewer said of it, "There is no longer an excuse for nomenclatural mistakes, since all past decisions are recorded here. All future revisions will use this reference as a point of departure." Now Gary Alpert, Philip Ward, and Piotr Naskrecki have joined Bolton to produce a completely updated and even more comprehensive edition of Bolton's monumental work.

The new edition incorporates all taxonomic papers--from 1758 through 2005--on 14,550 species and subspecies of ants. The CD allows every valid species name to be linked to the primary taxonomic citation and to all subsequent taxonomic literature that is relevant. As was true of the earlier edition, both fossil and living ants are covered from the species level up through the subgenus, genus, tribe, and subfamily rank. Each species description also records the caste--worker, queen, male, soldier, or minor worker--which was described, along with the page number and any illustrations. Ant larvae descriptions and chromosome papers can be searched within the data set. The ant's type locality on a country-by-country basis can also be queried from this catalogue.

On any night in early June, if you stand on the right beaches of America's East Coast, you can travel back in time all the way to the Jurassic. For as you watch, thousands of horseshoe crabs will emerge from the foam and scuttle up the beach to their spawning grounds, as they've done, nearly unchanged, for more than 440 million years.
Horseshoe crabs are far from the only contemporary manifestation of Earth's distant past, and in "Relics," world-renowned zoologist and photographer Piotr Naskrecki leads readers on an unbelievable journey through those lingering traces of a lost world. With camera in hand, he travels the globe to create a words-and-pictures portrait of our planet like no other, a time-lapse tour that renders Earth's colossal age comprehensible, visible in creatures and habitats that have persisted, nearly untouched, for hundreds of millions of years.
Naskrecki begins by defining the concept of a relic--a creature or habitat that, while acted upon by evolution, remains remarkably similar to its earliest manifestations in the fossil record. Then he pulls back the Cambrian curtain to reveal relic after eye-popping relic: katydids, ancient reptiles, horsetail ferns, majestic magnolias, and more, all depicted through stunning photographs and first-person accounts of Naskrecki's time studying them and watching their interactions in their natural habitats. Then he turns to the habitats themselves, traveling to such remote locations as the Atewa Plateau of Africa, the highlands of Papua New Guinea, and the lush forests of the Guyana Shield of South America--a group of relatively untrammeled ecosystems that are the current end point of staggeringly long, uninterrupted histories that have made them our best entryway to understanding what the prehuman world looked, felt, sounded, and even smelled like.
The stories and images of Earth's past assembled in "Relics" are beautiful, breathtaking, and unmooring, plunging the reader into the hitherto incomprehensible reaches of deep time. We emerge changed, astonished by the unbroken skein of life on Earth and attentive to the hidden heritage of our planet's past that surrounds us.

Smaller, on average, than a human finger, creatures climbing, scampering, and flying out of sight make up 99 percent of all animal life visible to the naked eye. This is the "smaller majority" that we meet eye-to-eye, often for the first time and certainly as never before, in Piotr Naskrecki's spectacular book. A large-format volume of over 400 exquisite, full-color photographs, some depicting animals never before captured with a camera, The Smaller Majority takes us on a visual journey into the remote world of organisms that, however little known, overlooked, or even reviled, are critical to the biodiversity of the tropics, and to the life of our planet. Here are the species who truly dominate the tropics, both in terms of their diversity and the ecological functions they play: invertebrates such as insects, arachnids, or flatworms, but also little-known vertebrates such as the pygmy chameleons of Madagascar or legless, underground frog kin known as caecilians; here is behavior never before documented, as in katydids preying upon one another, photographed in places few have visited. Using pioneering camera techniques that allow us to see the world of these creatures from their point of view, the book exposes the environment in which they live, the threats they face, and the devastating impact their disappearance may have. A unique introduction to the marvelous variety of the overlooked life under our feet, Naskrecki's book returns us to a child's sense of wonder with a fully informed, deeply felt understanding of the importance of so much of the world's smaller, teeming life.

Encounter some of the most beautiful creatures in Costa Rica in Piotr Naskrecki’s Hidden Kingdom. This book is a visual journey into the world of the insects and their relatives that dominate all terrestrial habitats in Costa Rica through their sheer numbers, biomass, and the ecological functions they perform. Naskrecki’s stunning photographs serve as both a tool to help identify the insects that a visitor to Costa Rica is likely to encounter, and as an illustration of their diverse behaviors and ecological roles. Through high-impact imagery and engaging narrative about insects and their evolutionary history, this book, an ideal companion on a visit to Costa Rica, reinforces or awakens in the readers their innate curiosity about the less appreciated elements of life on Earth. Each section of the book presents fascinating and useful facts about Costa Rica’s insects. Naskrecki’s photographs show the variety of morphological adaptations, survival strategies, and interlocking roles that insects play in tropical ecosystems.

The Konashen Community Owned Conservation Area (COCA)--a stretch of 625,000 hectares of forest in the southern region of Guyana--is relatively unexplored and considered to be one of the last large intact areas of tropical wilderness remaining in Guyana. The data collected during a rapid assessment survey, summarized in this volume, indicate that the forests of the Konashen COCA--maintained primarily by members of the Wai Wai indigenous group--are in very good condition and support rich biodiversity. The assessment team recorded twelve species that are likely new to science as well as more than sixty species found for the first time in Guyana and a number of threatened and endemic species.