Microworlds: (Book 151 Collins New Naturalist Library)

Microworlds brings to life a whole new ecosystem populated by a bewildering array of forms living extraordinary lives. It is a remarkable eyeopener for all naturalists.

For most of the history of life on Earth all life was microscopic, and even today most of biodiversity is still microscopic. Until the invention of the microscope in the seventeenth century all this diverse microworld was completely unknown. As well as dominating Earth for eons, microbes are still vital to the health of the planet. Microworlds, the new volume in the New Naturalist Library, reveals the incredible life forms that lie beyond our everyday perception. It focuses on protists, organisms an earlier generation of biologists called algae and protozoa, rather than the often much smaller bacteria and viruses. Concentrating on the extraordinary range that can be seen with at most a relatively basic microscope, the book reveals the biology of these miniscule life forms. Some of them – notably Amoeba proteus and Paramecium – are widely known to anyone who has peered down a microscope in a school science class. But the microworld is an extraordinary assemblage of a vast range of different species – some of which have life-styles that seem very familiar to the larger life forms that they live amongst, while some of their lifestyles simply seem like science fiction.

In describing this enthralling world, Microworlds brings to life a whole new ecosystem populated by a bewildering array of forms living extraordinary lives. It is a remarkable eyeopener for all naturalists.

David M. Wilkinson is an ecologist with very wide interests, having published research on organisms ranging from bacteria to sauropod dinosaurs, but he has a particular interest in testate amoebae. He was a Reader in environmental science at Liverpool John Moores University, where he taught for almost a quarter of a century. He is now Honorary Professor in ecology at the University of Lincoln, and an honorary research fellow in archaeology at the University of Nottingham. His book Fundamental Processes in Ecology; An Earth Systems Approach won the British Ecological Society’s Marsh Book of the Year Award in 2007; a second edition of this book was published in 2023. This is his second book for the New Naturalist series.