- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The fifth edition will be published later this year. The expected date is prior to the Entomological Society of America's annual meeting, to be held Nov. 16-19 in Portland, Ore.
“The economics and contractual obligations placed upon textbook authors require major updates every four to five years, retired or not,” Cranston said. “Thus for the past year we have been reviewing the whole field of entomology and our retirements have been ‘on hold.'” They delivered the completed fifth edition to Wiley in July.
What's new? Most changes are associated with the results of human activities, including warming of the planet but also including global trade, they said. Thus, they added 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 crops, domestic animals and people,” they wrote in an email. “However, at least of equal significance are the changes in insect ranges associated with global commerce (‘free trade') that brings many accidental passenger insects that impact agriculture, health and the natural environment. This situation is caricatured on the front cover of this new edition, in a tribute to Canadian insect illustrator Barry Flahey. Barry should be known to entomologists as the artist responsible for those wonderful whimsical posters (and Christmas cards) featuring medleys of anthropomorphised bugs. Karina McInnes, the artist for all previous editions of the textbook, went well outside her comfort zone to pay tribute to Barry's style in highlighting several pest insects known to hitch-hike via our transportation system."
“Also molecular genetic techniques have become increasingly sophisticated and have transformed so many areas of entomology. Molecular studies have particularly informed our ideas of evolutionary relationships at all levels, and all phylogenies have had to be modified between book editions. Knowledge of the relationships among orders has been strengthened in the past five years, and there is much less uncertainty. For example, the hexapods, to which the insects belong, clearly 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, including with the use of ‘DNA barcoding'. Modelling techniques of increasing sophistication allow exploration of the rate of molecular evolution, which in conjunction with better-studied fossil insects, provide increasingly reliable estimates of the tempo of insect evolution over the past 400 million years.
“A constant feature of the design of the book has been the use of ‘boxes' for material tangential to the main text but of topical (although perhaps ephemeral) importance.” For example, in the opening chapter they give recognition to the dynamism provided to entomology by ‘non-mainstream' insect lovers, from recording schemes and citizen scientists to the managers of insect houses. Inevitably updating involved reporting in new boxes the effects of ever-more insects spreading and damaging plants of interest to humans, namely ornamental and environmental trees, including palms, and most worryingly, high quality Arabica coffee. Information from some boxes from previous editions has been downsized and merged with the text or discarded.
Now that their fifth edition is finished, Cranston and Gullan say they are returning to their "retirement activities," that is, research on the systematics and ecology of their favorite insects--scales and midges.
Cranston holds a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of London. His research interests systematics, ecology and biogeography of aquatic insects, particularly the Chironomidae (non-biting midges).
Gullan received her doctorate in entomology from Monash University, Australia. Her research interests are systematics (taxonomy and phylogeny) and biology of scale insects (Hemiptera: Coccoidea), especially soft scales, eriococcids, margarodids and mealybugs; ant-coccoid interactions; insect-plant interactions involving sap-sucking insects, especially gall-inducing taxa.