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Shuker D.M. & Simmons L.W. (eds) 2014: THE EVOLUTION OF INSECT MATING SYSTEMS. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 339 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-967802-0 (hbk), ISBN 978-0-19967803-7 (pbk). Price GBP 75.00/37.50.
The reviewed book was preceded by two keystone monographic publications that paved the way for the contemporary understanding of various modes of insect reproduction presented very expertly in the current volume. Entomology in the second half of the 20th century was marked by increasing interest in the staggering diversity of sexual behaviour in insects, primarily the alternative roles of the opposite sexes in mating activities. This led to the selection of this aspect of insect ethology as a symposium topic for the Behaviour Section of the 15th International Congress of Entomology in Washington D.C. in 1976. The overall quality of the papers presented, as well as a broad interest in the subject, led to the publication of the contributions in a book entitled Sexual Selection and Reproductive Competition in Insects ( Academic Press, 1979). The papers presented at that meeting were expanded and updated and additional manuscripts by outstanding evolutionary biologists at that time were included. This volume thus presented the first comprehensive synthesis of biological concepts that emphasize intrasexual reproductive competition as a driving force in Darwinian sexual selection based on evidence that had accumulated over several preceding decades from studies on these aspects of insect behaviour.
While the above edited volume served as an inventory of the multitude of modes of insect reproductive behaviour, a book on a similar theme, The Evolution of Insect Mating Systems, authored by Randy Thornhill and John Alcock, which appeared just four years later (Harvard University Press, 1983), was more ambitious, namely in terms of theory. Hence this book was welcomed both by entomologists and a growing body of evolutionary theorists as the first comprehensive review and analysis of the evolution of insect reproductive behaviour. The authors presented the great diversity of insect mating systems based on a large body of literature and attempted to explain them in terms of differences between the sexes in their...