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The urban naturalist : how to make the city your scientific playground / Menno Schilthuizen ; illustrations by Jono Nussbaum.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublisher: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2025]Description: xvii, 291 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmISBN:
  • 9780262049092
Subject(s): LOC classification:
  • QH45.5 .S36 2025
Contents:
Part I: Build your own down house: We can all be Victorian naturalists now. The age of the amateur — Rock vacations — Darwin @home — Labs for everyone — Virtual academia — On Chesil beachcombing — Dead bug becomes specimen. Part II: The city is your Galápagos: The urban as the naturalist's goldmine. Hidden riches — Nov. spec. — Urban islands — Involuntary slaughter — It's a trap! — Animal architects of the Anthropocene — The accidental ecosystem — On the origin of urban species — We are a node. Part III: Knowledge is power: The urban naturalist-conservationist. Speak softly and carry a big stick insect — Tak kenal maka tak cinta — Let it grow.
Summary: A manifesto—and a field guide—for a new dawn of natural history, practiced by community scientists in their own urban jungle. Imagine taking your smartphone-turned-microscope to an empty lot and discovering a rare mason bee that builds its nest in empty snail shells. Or a miniature spider that hunts ants and carries their corpses around. With a team of citizen scientists, that's exactly what Menno Schilthuizen did—one instance in the evolutionary biologist's campaign to take natural science to the urban landscape where most of us live today. In this delightful book, The Urban Naturalist, Schilthuizen invites us to join him, to embark on a new age of discovery, venturing out as intrepid explorers of our own urban habitat—and maybe in the process do the natural world some good. Thanks to the open science revolution, real biological discoveries can now be made by anyone right where they live. Schilthuizen shows readers just how to go about making those discoveries, introducing them to the tools of the trade of the urban community scientist, from the tried and tested (the field notebook, the butterfly net, and the hand lens) to the newfangled (internet resources, low-tech gadgets, and off-the-shelf gizmos). But beyond technology, his book holds the promise of reviving the lost tradition of the citizen scientist—rekindling the spirit of the Victorian naturalist for the modern world. At a time when the only nature most people get to see is urban, The Urban Naturalist demonstrates that understanding the novel ecosystems around us is our best hope for appreciating and protecting biodiversity.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I: Build your own down house: We can all be Victorian naturalists now.
The age of the amateur — Rock vacations — Darwin @home — Labs for everyone — Virtual academia — On Chesil beachcombing — Dead bug becomes specimen.

Part II: The city is your Galápagos: The urban as the naturalist's goldmine.
Hidden riches — Nov. spec. — Urban islands — Involuntary slaughter — It's a trap! — Animal architects of the Anthropocene — The accidental ecosystem — On the origin of urban species — We are a node.

Part III: Knowledge is power: The urban naturalist-conservationist.
Speak softly and carry a big stick insect — Tak kenal maka tak cinta — Let it grow.

A manifesto—and a field guide—for a new dawn of natural history, practiced by community scientists in their own urban jungle.

Imagine taking your smartphone-turned-microscope to an empty lot and discovering a rare mason bee that builds its nest in empty snail shells. Or a miniature spider that hunts ants and carries their corpses around. With a team of citizen scientists, that's exactly what Menno Schilthuizen did—one instance in the evolutionary biologist's campaign to take natural science to the urban landscape where most of us live today. In this delightful book, The Urban Naturalist, Schilthuizen invites us to join him, to embark on a new age of discovery, venturing out as intrepid explorers of our own urban habitat—and maybe in the process do the natural world some good.

Thanks to the open science revolution, real biological discoveries can now be made by anyone right where they live. Schilthuizen shows readers just how to go about making those discoveries, introducing them to the tools of the trade of the urban community scientist, from the tried and tested (the field notebook, the butterfly net, and the hand lens) to the newfangled (internet resources, low-tech gadgets, and off-the-shelf gizmos). But beyond technology, his book holds the promise of reviving the lost tradition of the citizen scientist—rekindling the spirit of the Victorian naturalist for the modern world.

At a time when the only nature most people get to see is urban, The Urban Naturalist demonstrates that understanding the novel ecosystems around us is our best hope for appreciating and protecting biodiversity.

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