Biologist Balcombe (What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins) fascinates with this deep dive into the world of flies, which some scientists contend is the largest and most diverse order. In often humorous prose, starting with a depiction of his own discovery that his body had been infiltrated by maggots on a research trip to South Africa, Balcombe reveals the intricate hidden world of these insects, generally dismissed as buzzing, biting pests. Through oft-bizarre examples, Balcombe surveys fly life cycles (the delicate mountain midge lives only two hours), diets (another midge eats only "termites captured by one kind of Amazonian comb-footed spider"), and reproductive methods (the honeymoon fly continually copulates for 56 hours). Balcombe also looks at the multifaceted relationship between humans and flies, which are not only vectors of diseases, but can provide evidence in homicides, a forensic method first used in 10th-century China. In vivid prose, Balcombe perfectly illustrates the complexity of the natural world. Armchair naturalists will find this a stunning and welcome complement to similar volumes such as The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild or The Soul of an Octopus. Photos. Agent: Stacey Glick, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (May)

Flies, two-winged flying insects that include everything from houseflies to mosquitoes to midges, are some of the least studied insects on the planet, which is surprising given that they're among the most populous and varied. But associations with filth and blight, biting and pestilence, and crop destruction don't make them very appealing. Balcombe wants to change that. Flies are fascinating, vital, and beautiful creatures. Flies are essential to the food chain, among the most common plant pollinators, and clean up rot and decay. They help solve crimes and heal wounds, and even unlock the possibility of insect sentience. Most famous for helping scientists study genetic inheritance via fruit flies, Diptera, it turns out, have far more to teach us. Balcombe also warns of the potential catastrophic effects of human actions on fly populations. Monoculture and pesticides are greatly reducing their numbers, but without flies, ecosystems will collapse. They may be pests, but flies deserve our respect and admiration. This is an excellent overview of what we know and what we're discovering about flies.

All the latest buzz about the tiny, winged critters we love to hate--often unjustly. "Let's face it, flies do not win popularity contests." So writes biologist and ethologist Balcombe, with considerable understatement. Every house has a fly swatter, and for good reason. "One in six humans alive today is infected by an insect-borne illness, and more often than not, the footprint left at the crime scene is that of a fly." Proving the point, he opens with a stomach-turning scene. Traveling in Africa, he was infected by skin maggots that he was forced to expel with a combination of ointment and brute force, delighting a park ranger who hadn't recorded their presences that far south in the continent. Geographically, flies are everywhere: Numbering some 160,000 species, they inhabit every continent, and some have even found a way to live in the ocean. As Balcombe writes, almost all of flydom is useful to humankind, performing essential services of pollination, waste disposal, and pest control and feeding countless other species. Diving deeper, he observes some flies do a nice job of controlling unpleasant creatures such as the fire ant. Balcombe provides an entertaining tour of the world of flies, from tiny midges and fruit flies to the large and obnoxious sandflies, all of which, he asserts, experience something like consciousness and have more going on mentally than we may believe. "Flies subjected to peripheral nerve injury by amputation of one of their legs developed long-lasting hypersensitivity to stimuli not perceived as painful by uninjured flies," he writes, which may give one pause when an intrusive fly invites being smacked by a rolled-up paper. More definitively, he writes at the close of this appreciative natural history, flies help return us to our origins: "We are all bags of nutrients," one entomologist told him, "and flies recycle those nutrients back to the earth." A lively, lucid exploration--everything you ever wanted to know about flies and then some. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.