The sand wasps : natural history and behavior

Howard Evans was a brilliant ethologist and systematist for whom the joy of science included lying on his belly in some remote location, digging out and diagramming a wasp's nest.

During his career, Evans described over 900 species and authored more than a dozen books, both technical and popular, on a wide range of entomological and natural history subjects.

Upon his death in 2002, he left behind an unfinished manuscript, intended as an update (though not a revision) of his classic 1966 work, "The Comparative Ethology and Evolution of the Sand Wasps".

Kevin O'Neill, Evans' former student and co-author, has completed and enlarged Evans' manuscript, to provide coverage of all sand-wasp tribes in Evan's earlier book.

The result is a tribe-by-tribe, species by species review of studies of the Bembicinae that have appeared over the last four decades. "The Sand Wasps: Natural History and Behavior" already has been hailed by specialists as a new bible for those working on solitary wasps and an essential reference for scientists more broadly interested in insect behavioural evolution.