Micro Life

Explore the everyday miracle of the microscopic world

With spectacular macro photography and microscope images, this book reveals a hidden, living world full of intricate structures beyond the naked eye. Included are the tiniest insects and spiders, but looking deeper, you will discover truly microscopic creatures - even bacteria and viruses.

Earth is home to more microbes, and more different types of microbes, than any other living organism. Bacteria on Earth outweigh humans by 1,100 to 1 and without them, all world ecosystems would collapse. This book reveals this vital, unseen realm, but it includes large life-forms too, in extreme close-up, so that you can wonder at the beauty of a pollen grain, a butterfly egg, the spore of a fungus, and the nerve cell of a human.

The spectacular imagery in Micro Life exploits cutting-edge technology, such as focus-stacked macro photographs, as well as micrographs (microscope images) including scanning electron micrographs. Illustrations nearby explain the science - from the workings of an insect's eye to how a plant "breathes" through its leaves. The biology builds into a reference on how life works - and how all organisms, however small, solve the basic problems of movement, reproduction, energy, communication, and defence.

Micro Life is a beautiful and surprising look at the natural world.