The New Neotropical Companion. John Kricher. 2017. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

At mid-day the vertical sun penetrated into the gloomy depths of this romantic spot, lighting up the leafy banks of the rivulet and its clean sandy margins, where numbers of scarlet, green, and black tanagers and brightly colored butterflies sport about in the stray beams. Sparkling brooks, large and small, traverse the glorious forest. (Bates, Henry Wallace. The Naturalist On the River Amazons, p. 56)

I was only nine years old when my parents gave me a present that would further spark my interest in the natural world, especially the tropics. The Wonders of Life On Earth, the “special de luxe edition,” was a large format, colorful book published by the editors of Life magazine. I still have my original copy. This was an introduction to the writings and theories of Darwin, filled with color photography and superb illustrations of wildlife from around the world. Two three-page fold-out illustrations immediately drew my attention. One was a sampling of the myriad types of colorful and weird insects found in a Brazilian rain forest, and the other was a painting of a classic ant swarm, with other attendant creatures, on a Neotropic forest floor. I used to gaze at these pictures for what seemed like hours. Here was a place that was dark and mysterious but dense with life, where unusual creatures flew, such as antbirds or the “Big Winged Masked Lantern Bug” (now known simply as lantern fly). “Could such a place be real?” It was then that I decided I would visit the Neotropics when “I grew up.”

As an adult, I have visited different parts of the Neotropics over the years, and each experience has never failed to exceed my childhood dreams. I have seen ant swarms and attendant antbirds, marveled at the large and colorful butterflies, and seen more species of birds there than any other place on the planet. But, as of this writing, I have yet to see a lantern fly, still one of my most wanted Torrid Zone species.

I was not the only one enthralled by The Wonders of Life on Earth as a young person. John Kricher’s dedication in The New Neotropical Companion reads: “To my parents, who introduced me to the world we live in and to the wonders of life on Earth.” Those are references to both the large format nature books published by Life magazine and The World We Live In, which has inspired any number of biologists, ecologists, and natural historians.

John Kricher is a professor of biology at Wheaton College, Massachusetts, who has a genuine talent for writing about the complexities of rain forest ecology. Although he has authored important academic books about the subject, he is most widely known for his books written for general audiences like birders.

There were earlier versions of this book. Kricher’s original book was simply called A Neotropical Companion and was published in 1989. It quickly became a natural history classic, affectionately called “the little green book.” Keep in mind that this was published at a time when it was still a big deal to take a birding trip to Costa Rica or Brazil. There were very few tour groups that catered to birders, and tourist facilities in some parts of the Neotropics were spartan or nonexistent. There were not always high-quality field guides to the places you wanted to go. Finding yourself facing a dark green lush wall of a rain forest, it was all you could do just to spot and identify a bird. At the time, few birders knew anything about the ecology of where they were or how those species they were gleefully ticking fit into that ecology. “ I wrote it at a time when field research in tropical ecology had really begun to burgeon.” (Kricher 1989, p. 9)

In 1989, A Neotropical Companion changed that. Here was a book that described how the trees and vines grew and how a rain forest functions. It taught you how to look for evolutionary patterns. A section called “A Rainforest Bestiary” (Kricher 1989, pp. 276–331) introduced the birder to the other denizens—or at least representative forms—of the rain forest. Finally, a section on “Neotropical Birds” (Kricher 1989, pp. 211–275) gave an overview of the groups and families of birds found there, focusing on their “adaptations and basic ecology” (p. 212) and the extreme avian species diversity in the Neotropics. A Neotropical Companion was beautifully illustrated with line drawings by Andrea S. LeJeune, and included that lantern fly I long to see. The problem was that as fine as these drawings were, black and white illustrations can never capture the full riotous beauty and complexity of the rain forest, particularly the landscapes. Still, A Neotropical Companion, though thick, was small and portable enough to bring with you or at least dip into on your plane ride south.