Longhorn beetles — Cerambycidae — are one of the most easily recognised groups of beetles, a cosmopolitan family that encompasses more than 33,000 species in 5,200 genera worldwide. Out of the 117 beetle families occurring in Australia, Cerambycidae is the sixth largest, comprising more than 1,400 species classified in 300 genera. Virtually all Cerambycidae feed on living or dead plant tissue and play a significant role in all terrestrial environments. Larvae often utilise damaged or dead trees for their development, and through feeding on rotten wood, form an important element of the saproxylic fauna, speeding nutrient and energy circulation in these habitats. Longhorn beetles can cause serious damage by sometimes feeding on and eventually killing living forest or orchard trees. Many species are listed as quarantine pests because of their destructive role to the timber industry, such as the European house borer introduced into Western Australia. This third volume in the series on Australian longhorn beetles extends to include the taxonomy of genera and species of the subfamily Prioninae of the Australo-Pacific Region. Seven tribes, 50 genera and 166 species are included. All genera and most species are diagnosed, described, illustrated and included in keys to their identification.

"Book of Monsters: Portraits and Biographies of a Few of the Inhabitants of Woodland and Meadow" by David Fairchild and Marian Fairchild David Grandison Fairchild was an American botanist and plant explorer. With his wife, Marian, he wrote this collection of biographical sketches of animals, bugs, and plants that live in the woods. The pictures in this book are portraits of creatures which are as much the real inhabitants of the world as we are, and have all the rights of ownership that we have, but, because their own struggle for existence so often crosses ours, many of them are our enemies. Indeed, man's own real struggle for the supremacy of the world is his struggle to control these tiny monsters.