Howard Evans was a brilliant ethologist and systematist for whom the joy of science included lying on his belly in some remote location, digging out and diagramming a wasp's nest. During his career, Evans described over 900 species and authored more than a dozen books, both technical and popular, on a wide range of entomological and natural history subjects. Upon his death in 2002, he left behind an unfinished manuscript, intended as an update (though not a revision) of his classic 1966 work, The Comparative Ethology and Evolution of the Sand Wasps. Kevin O'Neill, Evans's former student and coauthor, has completed and enlarged Evans's manuscript, to provide coverage of all sand-wasp tribes in Evan's earlier book. The result is a tribe-by-tribe, species by species review of studies of the Bembicinae that have appeared over the last four decades. The Sand Wasps: Natural History and Behavior already has been hailed by specialists as a new bible for those working on solitary wasps and an essential reference for scientists more broadly interested in insect behavioral evolution.

Howard E. Evans was Professor Emeritus of Entomology, Colorado State University. From 1960 to 1973, he was at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. He was author of The Comparative Ethology and Evolution of the Sand Wasps and co-author of William Morton Wheeler, Biologist (both from Harvard), among many other books.

Kevin M. O’Neill is Professor of Entomology, Montana State University, and author of Solitary Wasps: Natural History and Behavior.