| Author: | P.J. Gullan & P.S. Cranston |
| Release at: | 2014 |
| Pages: | 648 |
| Edition: | 5th Edition (An Outline of Entomology) |
| Language: | English |
Description of The Insects 5th Edition
The Insects 5th Edition by P.J. Gullan & P.S. Cranston is a great Entomology book for study. In the preface to the previous (fourth) edition of this textbook, we predicted several changes to the discipline of the study of insects – entomology. For many, we were correct, for good and bad. Most changes are associated with human activities, including warming of the planet but also including global trade, such that we have written a new chapter entitled “Insects in a changing world”. Insects clearly respond to changes in climate, and this is of immediate concern for the spread of insect-borne diseases affecting our crops, our domestic animals and us. However, at least of equal significance are the insect range expansions associated with trade, as depicted on the cover of this book. Increased global commerce (“free trade”) brings with it many accidental passenger insects that impact agriculture and the natural environment, but we did not foresee how many of these would damage our timber industries and landscape trees. Biosecurity, involving increased surveillance at our ports, airports and land borders, is a growing industry requiring personnel trained in entomology. Without such vigilance, we will have pests “without borders” in a homogeneous agricultural world.
We foresaw that increasingly sophisticated molecular genetic techniques would transform many areas of entomology. These studies have particularly informed our ideas of evolutionary relationships at all levels. Our understanding of the relationships among orders has been strengthened in the past five years, and there is much less uncertainty. For example, we are now confident that the hexapods, to which the insects belong, evolved from within the Crustacea, thus forming a group Pancrustacea. Closer to tips of insect phylogenetic trees, the true diversity at species level is being revealed with molecular techniques, including the use of “DNA barcoding”. Modelling techniques of increasing sophistication allow exploration of the rate of molecular evolution, which in conjunction with critically examined fossil insects, provide increasingly reliable estimates of the tempo of insect evolution over the past 400 million years.
Content of The Insects 5th Edition
Chapter 1: THE IMPORTANCE, DIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION OF INSECTS
Chapter 2: EXTERNAL ANATOMY
Chapter 3: INTERNAL ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY
Chapter 4: SENSORY SYSTEMS AND BEHAVIOUR
Chapter 5: REPRODUCTION
Chapter 6: INSECT DEVELOPMENT AND LIFE HISTORIES
Chapter 7: INSECT SYSTEMATICS: PHYLOGENY AND CLASSIFICATION
Chapter 8: INSECT EVOLUTION AND BIOGEOGRAPHY
Chapter 9: GROUND-DWELLING INSECTS
Chapter 10: AQUATIC INSECTS
Chapter 11: INSECTS AND PLANTS
Chapter 12: INSECTS SOCIETIES
Chapter 13: INSECT PREDATION AND PARASITISM
Chapter 14: INSECTS DEFENCE
Chapter 15: MEDICAL AND VETERINARY ENTOMOLOGY
Chapter 16: PEST MANAGEMENT
Chapter 17: INSECTS IN A CHANGING WORLD,
Chapter 18: METHODS IN ENTOMOLOGY: COLLECTING, PRESERVATION, CURATION AND IDENTIFICATION
Chapter 19: TAXOBOXES
INDEX
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