The boring wasps

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure "The Pollen Wasps" is a very good book...for professional entomologists. However, for a general reader like myself, it was boring, technical and occasionally incomprehensible. This, then, is a book for the scientific research library.

If you want to know what species of pollen wasp visits the flowery plant Wahlenbergia annularis, or what species of Mutillidae are larval ectoparasitoids on which pollen wasps, or are dying to find out about the exact cladistic relationship of Masarinae within Vespoidea, then this is the book for you. If not... Although the book covers the entire subfamily of pollen wasps, there is an obvious bias towards South Africa, where the author has carried out years of research on these insects. Weirdly, a few species of pollen wasps in the Southwestern Cape are actually threatened by extinction.

In a way, it's a real pity that this book isn't more popularized. The very idea of a vegetarian wasp feels inherently appealing. Most wasps, after all, are predators. Pollen wasps, by contrast, provision their larvae with pollen and nectar. But yes, they do sting!

Perhaps Sarah Gess could write a more popular book on this subject in the future? I'm sure pollen wasps don't need to be boring...