Gardening for Moths: A Regional Guide

My coauthor, Chelsea Gottfried, and I have been hard at work on the above title (screen capture from its Amazon page) for several years. The book is now at the printer and should be out by late February or thereabouts. Even though the book just hit Amazon a few days ago or thereabouts, we are pleased that it is already ranked #1 in midwestern gardening books, #1 in butterfly books (butterflies are essentially moths), and #2 in all entomology books. If I might unabashedly blow our horn :-) That's all from pre-sales.

We worked with Ohio University Press to produce this 280-page book, which features over 500 color photos and profiles nearly 150 heavy-hitter native plant species and about the same number of moth species. It covers a region that includes nine midwestern states, or parts thereof. A meaty introduction makes the case for moths' importance in food webs, such as for bats and birds. Moths play a large role in pollination services - certainly far beyond that of butterflies, which they greatly outnumber in both species and sheer numbers. Other introductory material covers moth myths and reputation, moth-watching tips, moth photography, human impacts on moths and moth conservation and much more. The text is peppered with numerous inset boxes that feature cool mini-stories about moths: aquatic moths, moth-specific ear mites, bolas spiders that lasso moths, moth caterpillars, moths and goatsuckers, moth-bat warfare, and other interesting material.

The overarching idea with this book is to shine a light on a facet of natural history that normally remains in the dark and is quite poorly known to most people. Gardeners, collectively, have tremendous power to influence our environment for the good, and this book offers a path forward by helping a charismatic group of insects of inestimable importance to the natural world.

For a description of Gardening for Moths, see the Ohio University Press page, HERE. Books can be pre-ordered there, or at Amazon, RIGHT HERE.