Maurice Hulle - The Terrestrial Macroinvertebrates of the Sub-Antarctic Iles Kerguelen and Ile de la Possession

5 Foreword 1

6 Foreword 2

7 Acknowledgements

8 Introduction

9 Begin Reading

10 Appendix

11 References

12 Index

13 End User License Agreement

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Series Editor

Marie-Christine Maurel

Maurice Hullé

Philippe Vernon

with the collaboration of

Bernard Chaubet

Damien Fourcy

Romain Georges

Christelle Buchard

First published 2021 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

ISTE Ltd

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London SW19 4EU

UK

www.iste.co.uk

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

111 River Street

Hoboken, NJ 07030

USA

www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2021

The rights of Maurice Hullé and Philippe Vernon to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021937387

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78630-760-6

Photography: Bernard Chaubet (INRAE)

Cartography: Damien Fourcy (INRAE)

Species identification: Romain Georges (University of Rennes 1), Christelle Buchard (INRAE)

The extraordinary American conservationist and thinker Aldo Leopold wrote: “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” To keep every cog and wheel presupposes that each one of them is not only known but can also be identified. For most places, knowing the full diversity of life is only imaginable. And for most people, identifying that diversity is unthinkable. Yet, a few specially endowed naturalists seem to be able to do so. And because they are often too little valued in our modern scientific world, their knowledge passes with them into history. Thus, places and the people who value them frequently fall into a cycle of knowing and forgetting.

Yet, every now and then, naturalists and writers come along who are determined to break that cycle. They recruit, through a combination of tenacity, charm and a fierce love for a place and its diversity, a host of helpers. Spurred on by the positive feedback that comes from enthusiasm, they recruit even more extensively. Eventually, they deliver a monograph of life. A record of a place’s diversity and the means for others to know it in all of its exquisite detail. In doing so, they make forever known a part of our world that would otherwise have remained trapped in that cycle of light and dark.

Here, Maurice Hullé and Philippe Vernon have done just this for the larger invertebrates of the extraordinary sub-Antarctic islands of the Îles Kerguelen and the Île de la Possession.

Doing so could not have been easy. Scattered knowledge is one thing. But finding the animals to verify the knowledge and to captivate the attention of new recruits is quite another. The sub-Antarctic islands are simply gorgeous and apparently teeming with life. Yet, most are no longer what they once were. On islands free of introduced species – such as rodents, cats, carnivorous beetles, herbivorous slugs and system-altering weeds – the abundance of invertebrates is extraordinary. Beetles, moths and other insects are simply everywhere, even in the apparently hostile habitats such as fellfields. The coastal zones no longer stand out as special because of their abundance of insects (notably some very strange flies). Yet on islands such as the Îles Kerguelen and the Île de la Possession, where introduced species have had much time to do their work, abundances, except of the introduced species and some coastal inhabitants, are very low. Low to the point of thinking that some species have gone forever. Yet, often they have not. It simply takes a great deal of work to find them. And a very special talent of combining relentless enthusiasm for hard field work and exceptional charm to keep people coming back in search of knowledge, to look at more specimens and answer more questions. Questions that can be remarkably uncomfortable to ensure that the knowledge is secure.

Such tenacity, a characteristic of the authors, results in a handsome reward, and this monograph of the larger terrestrial invertebrate life of these islands is just such a reward. How extraordinary to have this work. The question “I wonder what this is?” is answered readily. And with that question addressed, immediately others can be posed. What does it do? What is its history of abundance? What is its future? How do we mitigate further change?