It’s hard out there for a bug. In Metamorphosis: Astonishing Insect Transformations, writer and nature photographer Rupert Soskin captures the unbelievably complex life cycles of some of the third planet’s creepiest critters.
“Like all arthropods, insects have a jointed exoskeleton covering the whole of the outside of their bodies,” George McGavin explains in the foreword. “As insects grow from egg to adult, the cuticle needs to be shed periodically. When moulting occurs, the old cuticle is shed, revealing a new one beneath that is then expanded and hardened.”
Here, after two weeks, a row of five lacewing eggs hatch within an hour of each other.
Courtesy Rupert Soskin
The adult wings extend beyond the abdomen, as can be seen in this mature female Empusa pennata (a praying mantis species) of the green form.
Courtesy Rupert Soskin
After heavy rain, a queen Polistes gallicus (a wasp species) tends to each of the nest’s flooded cells in turn, meticulously sucking out the water and spitting it away from her vulnerable eggs and larvae.
Courtesy Rupert Soskin
Two Attacus atlas (a moth species) larvae, exactly the same age, illustrate how a hormone imbalance can dramatically affect an insect’s development, in this case, fatally preventing growth.
Courtesy Rupert Soskin
A Colletes cunicularius (a bee species) sporting pollen bearing pollinia, which were glued to its face by an orchid.
Courtesy Rupert Soskin
An adult female Phyllium phillipinicum. Despite the impressive wings, the females are flightless.
Courtesy Rupert Soskin
Unlike that produced by the majority of Hymenopterans, the venom of ant species Crematogaster is topical rather than injected and individuals may brandish droplets as a threat. If threats go unheeded, they will apply the venom directly onto their attackers, or flick the droplets at them.
Courtesy Rupert Soskin
Metamorphosis: Astonishing Insect Transformations is available Oct. 27 through Bloomsbury Publishing.
Courtesy Rupert Soskin
