Erica McAlister

Insects are incredibly weird. Their morphology is about as alien to us as you can get without leaving this planet. They outnumber us 200 million to one. Before humans stamped their mark on this planet, insects had shaped it into the colourful and extraordinary world we all share today. Whether it’s the astonishing properties of resilin, the protein that makes...

Enter a hidden world of snail killers, silly names and crazy sex lives in The Secret Life of Flies. In The Secret Life of Flies, entomologist Erica McAlister gets under the wings of these crucial creatures as she ventures into the land of the fly. From hungry herbivores and precocious pollinators to robber flies, danceflies and the much-maligned mosquito, she...

The Inside Out of Flies is a look under the bonnet at the astonishing mechanics of fly anatomy. Erica McAlister reveals the engineering miracles embodied in each species of fly and some of the fascinating implications they hold for human technology. Discover the physics of the mysterious ‘scuba diving fly’, marvel at the venomous horsefly larvae which prey on frogs...