Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World’s Most Successful Insects

In Super Fly, biologist Jonathan Balcombe shows the order Diptera in all of its diversity, illustrating the essential role that flies play in every ecosystem in the world as pollinators, waste-disposers, predators, and food source; and how flies continue to reshape current understandings of evolution. Along the way, he reintroduces readers to familiar foes like the fruit fly and mosquito, and gives them a chance to meet lesser-known cousins like the Petroleum Fly (the only animal in the world that breeds in crude oil) and the Chocolate Midge (the sole pollinator of the Cacao tree). No matter one’s outlook on these tiny buzzing neighbors, Super Fly will change the way readers look at flies.