Insects are the most successful group of animals ever to have lived: they comprise a million species and perhaps 10 quintillion individuals. Much of life on earth depends on the activities of these busy, teeming arthropods, from pollination to the breaking down of waste matter.

Each chapter of Planet Insect centres on one or more of the traits of insect life that have allowed them to hold dominion over the earth's terrestrial and freshwater environments for so long, from their staggering reproductive ability to their complex partnership with flowering plants. Planet Insect offers a winning fusion of glorious imagery and fine biological writing by an entomological specialist who writes both entertainingly and with authentic scientific rigour - and who also happens to be a very gifted nature photographer.

Steve Nicholls is an award-winning television documentary producer and director based in Bristol. He holds a PhD in dragonflies from the University of Bristol and is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London. He has spent thirty years making wildlife films, including ten with the BBC Natural History Unit, and his plant photographs have won several awards in the prestigious International Garden Photographer of the Year competition. Nicholls is the author of Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery and Flowers of the Field: A Secret History of Meadow, Moor and Woodland.