Description
In the five years since the previous (third) edition of this textbook, the discipline of entomology has seen some major changes in emphasis. The opening up of global commerce (free trade) has brought with it many acci-dental passengers, including both potential and actual pestilential insects of our crops and ornamental plants, and our health. Efforts to prevent further incursions include increased surveillance, in what has become known as biosecurity, at our ports, airports and land borders. Entomologists increasingly are employed in quarantine and biosecurity, where they predict threats, and are expected to use diagnostics to recognize pests and distinguish those that are new arrivals. The inevitable newly arrived and established pests must be surveyed and control measures planned. In this edition we discuss several of these “emergent” threats from insects and the diseases that some can carry.
Molecular techniques of ever-increasing sophis-tication are now commonplace in many aspects of entomological study, ranging from genomic studies seeking to understand the basis of behaviors, to molec-ular diagnostics and the use of sequences to untangle the phylogeny of this most diverse group of organisms. Although this book is not the place to detail this fast evolving field, we present the results of many molec-ular studies, particularly in relation to our attempts to reconcile different ideas on evolutionary relation-ships, where much uncertainty remains despite a growing volume of nucleotide sequence data from a cadre of informative markers. In addition, ever more insects have their complete mitochondrial genomes sequenced, and the whole nuclear genome is available for an increasing diversity of insects, providing much scope for in-depth comparative studies. Important insights have already come from the ability to “silence” particular genes to observe the outcome, for example in aspects of development and communication.
Inevitably, new molecular information will change some views on insect relationships, physiology and behavior, even in the short time between completion of this new revision and its publication. Thus we present only well established views.
In this edition of the textbook, we have updated and relocated the boxes concerning each major grouping (the traditional orders) from the chapter in which their generalized ecology placed them, to the end of the book, where they can be located more easily. We have used the best current estimates of relationships and imple-ment a new ordinal classification for several groups. Strong evidence suggests that (a) termites (“Isoptera”) are actually cockroaches (Blattodea), (b) the parasitic lice (“Phthiraptera”) arose from within the free-living bark and book lice (“Psocoptera”) forming order Psocodea, and (c) the fleas (“Siphonaptera”) perhaps arose within Mecoptera. We discuss (and illustrate with trees) the evolutionary and classificatory significance and applications of these and other findings.
The updated chapter texts are supplemented with an additional 18 new boxes, including on the topical subjects of the African honey bee and Colony Collapse Disorder (of bees) in the sphere of apiary, beewolf micro-bial defense, and the use of bed nets and resurgence of bed bugs, Dengue fever and West Nile virus in relation to human health. New boxes are provided on how ento-mologists recognize species, on important aquatic insects and energy fluxes,andon evolutionary relationships of flamingo lice. Some case studies in emergent plant pests are presented, including the Emerald ash borer that is destroying North American landscape trees, and other insects (light brown apple moth, citrus psyllid and fruit flies) that threaten US crops. We relate the astonishing success story in classical biological control of the glassy-winged sharpshooter in the Pacific that provides hope for rejuvenation of this method of pest control.
Much of this fourth edition was written in Australia. We acknowledge the generosity and companionship of everyone in “Botany and Zoology” within the School of Biology at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, where we spent 10 weeks as ANU Visiting Fellows in early 2009. We also appreciate the hos-pitality of Frances FitzGibbon, with whom we stayed for the period that we were based at ANU. Thank you Frances for the use of your spare bedroom with the view of the Australian bush with its many birds and the occasional group of kangaroos. Our home Depart-ment of Entomology and the academic administration at UC Davis approved our three-month sabbatical leave to allow us quality time to revise this book. We are grateful to the staff in our home department for logistic support during the time we worked on the book and especially Kathy Garvey for assistance with an illustration. We are grateful to the following colleagues worldwide (listed alphabetically) for providing infor-mation and ideas on many aspects of insect biology and phylogeny: Eldon Ball, Stephen Cameron, Jason Cryan, Mark Hoddle, Kevin Johnson, Bob Kimsey, Karl Kjer, Klaus-Dieter Klass, Ed Lewis, Jim Marden, Jenny Mordue, Geoff Morse, Laurence Mound, Eric Mussen, Laurence Packer, Brad Sinclair, Vince Smith and Shaun Winterton. However, any errors of interpretation or fact are our responsibility alone. We thank our stu-dents Haley Bastien, Sarah Han, Nick Herold, and Scott McCluen for their assistance in compiling the index.
Most importantly, we were so pleased that Karina McInnes was able to recall her entomological pen-and-ink skills to provide us with a series of wonderful illustrations to capture the essence of so many insects, both friends and foes of the human world, going about their daily business.
We are grateful to the staff at Wiley-Blackwell, espe-cially Ward Cooper, Rosie Hayden, and Delia Sandford for their continued support and excellent service. We were fortunate to have Nik Prowse edit the text of this edition.