This volume presents 70 carefully selected papers from a major joint event: the 8th International Conference on Soft Computing and Pattern Recognition (SoCPaR 2016) and the 8th International Conference on Computational Aspects of Social Networks (CASoN 2016). SoCPaR–CASoN 2016, which was organized by the Machine Intelligence Research Labs (MIR Labs), USA and Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), India and held at the VIT on December 19–21, 2016. It brings together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to share their experiences and exchange new ideas on all interdisciplinary areas of soft computing and pattern recognition, as well as intelligent methods applied to social networks. This book is a valuable resource for practicing engineers/scientists and researchers working in the field of soft computing, pattern recognition and social networks.

The papers in this book are organized as follows: insect-plant communities, host-plant selection, genetics and evolution, host-plant resistance and application of transgenic plants, and multitrophic interactions. Besides seven invited papers and a paper with concluding remarks, this volume also contains the short communications of all 115 oral presentations and posters. Included too, are the summaries of four European Science Foundation workshops held over the past two years, where European scientists discussed the state-of-the-art and the future of major topics in insect-plant interactions in order to develop better integrated research programs. The field of insect-plant interactions nowadays includes almost all of biology, as well as parts of chemistry and physics. It takes a central position in biology because insects are the most abundant animal group, half of them are herbivores and they dominate all terrestrial ecosystems. Knowledge of insect-plant interactions is thus fundamental to an understanding of the evolution of life on Earth. Two major topics of worldwide concern give this field an extra dimension. First, large amounts of food crops are still lost due to insect pests. With the increasing concern for environmental pollution and the subsequent plans to drastically reduce pesticides, integrated pest management and development of resistant crops become a major focus in agriculture. The importance of the study of insect-plant relationships is thus continuously augmented. Clearly, successful pest control demands sufficient fundamental knowledge of pest-host interactions. Second, such work can contribute towards stopping or even counterbalancing the threatening biodiversity crisis thanks to an understanding of how the interaction of insects and plants has influenced and still influences the diversification and speciation (evolution) of both groups. These problems should, of course, be approached at a multitrophic level.

The papers in this book are organized as follows: insect-plant communities, host-plant selection, genetics and evolution, host-plant resistance and application of transgenic plants, and multitrophic interactions. Besides seven invited papers and a paper with concluding remarks, this volume also contains the short communications of all 115 oral presentations and posters. Included, too, are the summaries of four European Science foundation workshops held over the past two years, where European scientists discussed the state of the art and the future of major topics in insect-plant interactions in order to develop better integrated research programmes.