Blog

Many people associate cockroaches with the pest species found in households and workspaces. This is understandable; cockroaches can carry disease and are associated with unhygienic conditions.

When you look beyond the pest label, however, they are quite fascinating. There is a lot of variation among the Australian cockroaches; with some species having beautiful markings. David Rentz has created a brilliant guide that helps readers identify most of the 550 described species found locally.

I never expected to become interested in mosquitoes. The ones I observed around central Geelong seemed dull compared to many other types of insects. This changed when I started following one of the co-authors, Dr Cameron Webb, on twitter. He frequently tweets about science communication, entomology and mosquitoes. I bought this book on a whim after Dr Webbs tweets had piqued my interest. It’s ended up becoming one of my favourite books in this series.

Galls were one of the first things I noticed when I started to explore entomology. I’d see these strange lumps on either the leaves or stems of various plants. Kind naturalists informed me that these were ‘galls,’ but it was a struggle to find accessible information on them.

This book filled part of that need. It’s just 61 pages, so barely scratched the surface when it came to exploring the fascinating world of galls. However, it is the only accessible guide I’ve found, and it packed a lot of information into these pages.