This monumental reference work treats an entire worldwide order of insects. It summarizes, from both a biological and sytematic perspective, current knowledge on the Heteroptera, or true bugs, a group containing approximately 35,000 species, many of which are important to agriculture and public health. To introduce the reader to this group, Randall T. Schuh and James A. Slater offer chapters on the history of the study of the Heteroptera, research techniques, and sources of specimens. They also cover attributes of general biological interest, including habitats, habits, mimicry, and wing polymorphism; selected taxa of economic importance; and basic morphology.Presenting a current classification of the Heteroptera, the authors synthesize to the subfamily and sometimes tribal level the enormous, scattered literature, including diagnoses, keys, general natural history, a summary of distributions, and a listing of important faunistic works. In addition to a wealth of detailed illustrations, they provide a glossary to help the reader deal with the confusing terminology that has evolved over the years, as well as an extensive bibliography of more than 1350 entries.Meticulously prepared by two of the world's leading specialists, this major work will be the standard reference on the Heteroptera for many years to come.

Heteropterans regularly cause a wide variety and large number of problems for humans - at times on a catastrophic scale. The 37,000 described species of this suborder including many pests, disease transmitters, and nuisances exist worldwide, inflicting damage on crops, forests, orchards, and human life. Inspired by the widespread economic impact of

Since 1987, drawing and painting directly from nature, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger has fought a one-woman campaign against the scientific establishment to show that artificial radioactivity, whether at high or low levels of fallout, is mutilating the insect and plant life that relate directly to genetic damage sustained by humans living under the same conditions. Following the path of the fallout from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986, she has collected bug and leaf specimens from sites in Sweden, Switzerland, and around the Chernobyl power plant itself. She has also studied insect and plant life around Sellafield in England, and at Three Mile Island in the United States. In every case, she has produced exquisite watercolors and drawings which record the malformations and growths she has found in meticulous detail, and the beauty of her art work only makes our understanding of the damage more acute. This is a brave and deeply political book which should be read by anyone concerned with the future development of life on the planet from the smallest bug in the garden to our children, and to their children after them.

This volume deals with the Heteroptera aquatica, or water bugs, known from Malesia, a region holding almost 1000 species belonging to seventeen families. The book includes keys to all families and genera, and provides information on their taxonomy, morphology, biology, distribution and economic importance. A checklist of the species recorded from Malesia and nearby areas, with references to original descriptions of all taxa, is included. The book is illustrated by more than 500 drawings and 35 distribution maps. A glossary explains the technical terms is employed. An extensive list of references will enable readers to trace all pertinent taxonomic literature published up to the end of 2003.

This book compiles for the first time all the current information on the electronic monitoring of the feeding behavior of phytophagous true bugs. It includes state-of-the-art illustrations of feeding sites on the various plant structures, and examines how the different feeding strategies are related to the variable waveforms generated using the electropenetrography (EPG) technique. Further, the book describes the mouthparts and modes of feeding and discusses the physical and chemical damage resulting from feeding activities. Covering in detail all EPG studies developed and conducted using true bugs published to date, it explores the use of electronic monitoring of feeding coupled with histological analyses to improve strategies to control true bugs, from traditional chemical methods to gene silencing (RNAi).