Images of Crete - Insects

By Geoff Needle

A personal collection of 60 photographs of insects taken around the Apokoronas area of north-west Crete. They show the wide diversity of colours, shapes and sizes of the insects to be seen in the Cretan countryside. They represent only a minute sample of the estimated 950,000 different species of insect to be found around the world. While some types are considered pests to humans or crops there are many other types that have some behaviour or characteristic that makes them highly beneficial to have around. They are truly amazing and very important creatures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781326898182

Book preview

Images of Crete - Insects

IMAGES OF CRETE

INSECTS

Author: Geoffrey Needle

All images: Geoff Needle

Copyright: Geoffrey Needle 2017

Publisher: Lulu

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-326-89818-2

INTRODUCTION

This book is a personal collection of 60 images of insects that have been taken around the Apokoronas area of north west Crete. The insects included in this book are a very small fraction of the very large and diverse range of insect species that live on Crete.

As other books describe the details of these different insect species far better and more accurately than I could, only general information has been added to some of the images. I hope you will look at the insects shown for what they are and think about their shape, size and colour. They are all well adapted to their environment and in the wider context of Mother Nature they are all beautiful creatures.

So what exactly are insects? They are a special sub-group of arthropod, where anthropods are small invertebrates having an external skeleton, segmented bodies with pairs of legs, wings, antennae and maybe some other appendages along their body.

Their segmented bodies have three well-defined sections: the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. There are always three pairs of legs attached to the centre thorax section. They may have no wings (as in ants after their reproductive phase), one pair of wings (mostly) or two pairs of wings (as in dragonflies and damselflies). The flight wings can either be exposed (as in flies and butterflies)