If you are going to spend any time in Costa Rica (or Panama) and want a meaningful guide to their amazing forests, this 484-page deep-dive is the one to buy!
If you are studying tropical ecology, tropical entomology, botany, or any of the associated sciences, you need it. If you are a naturalist visiting Costa Rica or Panama, you need it. And, if you just want to take a look at what goes on in wet, lowland tropical forest, it will not disappoint!
I met Scott Schumway, gosh… maybe five years ago, at La Selva Biological Station. He asked me if I was "the bug photographer guy" and extracted a promise from me that I would let him use insect photos I’d taken at La Selva in a book he claimed he was writing.
Promises to participate in a future publication are easy to make -- especially far from home and to people you don't know, and I promptly forgot about the conversation. Fast forward many months, and I get an email from Scott with a “want list”.
I frequently work with Lou Staunton, and I roped her into the deal. Lou’s lovely shot of a calling red-eyed green frog graces the cover. I think Scott used about 100 of our insect, frog, and snake photos in this book. Most were on his list, and a few are very rare creatures that are seldom photographed. This is the fourth Princeton University Press publication on which I have worked.
Scott is a retired Professor of Biology, and his book was twelve years in the making. There are sections on fish, cats, mammals, plants, and so on. Best of all, Scott has drilled down into the interesting stuff. So, parasitoids get a section, bird mating systems are explored, relationships between plants and insects are covered, and so on. This is far, far more than a guidebook and I wish I’d had a copy years ago when I started photographing in the tropics and at La Selva in particular.
Scott is a thoroughly nice guy and a few dollars of the $48 you will pay for this weighty work will undoubtedly trickle down to him and help ease his dotage. Knowing how long it took to research and write, that will probably work out to about 7 cents an hour! Meanwhile, you’ll have a guide that is actually useful.
Order from Princeton University Press or get it on Amazon: Costa Rica's Rainforests: The Natural History of the Plants and Animals of La Selva.
