and it's here

 I mentioned finding a (somewhat) affordable copy of Dan Dindal's Soil Biology Guide.

(Somewhat affordable: $150 instead of $220)

Yeah, it was a big investment but I've wanted a copy for a long time and it will help with whatever remaining invertebrate research I do*

It's huge. It was published in 1990 but has been out of print for a while and it is hard to find copies for a reasonable price.

 

 It's a nicely-produced book, with LOTS of detail on MANY groups. Like here is a page showing some of the "ornamentation" on the integuments of tardigrades:

 And the spine has another favorite invertebrate of mine on it: a pseudoscorpion, which are extremely cool in a lot of ways.

 The person who had this before me was careful with their books - it's in good shape - and they even kept the little folder of printed errata for the book and it was tucked inside the front cover (nice to have)

 

(*I do wonder, what happens if I either choose to retire in four years, or get forced out - either because of declining health/injury gets worse or because a financial crash shutters the small regional universities. I also have a set of Britton and Brown's plant identification guides I bought like fifteen years ago. I suppose years back I could have passed them on to a newer researcher,but most people now seem to like to use online resources - not that there a whole lot for soil invertebrates - and we also don't turn out as many organismal biologists as we once did. I have a few books I inherited from my dad, not that they're even in my specialty)