The memoir of a scientist and the wild silk moths he studies Biologist Michael Collins has been studying wild silk moths since he was a boy. This family -- which includes the largest and most colorful of the North American moths -- led Collins into a long career as a scientist, and has provided him with significant insights into the process by which new species evolve. Moth Catcher is Collins"s engaging account of his development as a scientist and of his groundbreaking research. The canyon and pass environments of the American West offer a setting in which, since the last Ice Age, organisms have adapted to new surroundings and where many have formed new species. Collins has discovered in the Sierra Nevada that geneticists call a "hybrid zone" where two species interbreed. This hybrid zone is unusual because both sexes are fertile, unlike lab-bred hybrids between the same silk moth species. Collins explains how such hybrid populations serve as...