The Forgotten Planet by Murray Leinster

Released in 1954 by Gnome Press in an edition of 5,000 copies. The novel is a fix-up from three short stories, “The Mad Planet” and “The Red Dust”, both of which had originally appeared in the magazine Argosy in 1920 and 1921, and “Nightmare Planet”, which had been published in Science Fiction Plus in 1953.

A planet had been seeded for life by humans, first with microbes and later with plants and insects. A third expedition, intended to complete the seeding with animals, never occurred. Over the millennia the insects and plants grew to gigantic sizes. The action of the novel describes the fight for survival by descendants of a crashed spaceship as they battle wolf-sized ants, flies the size of chickens, and gigantic flying wasps.

Written in third person omniscient, the story is more of an explanation of science and biology than a human centered nattative. There is plenty of actions as the main protaganist, Burl fights for his life against the megafauna. There is litle dialoque and the story ends quickly with the planet joining a galactic empire forged by mankind.