The Insects has been the standard textbook in the field since the first edition published over forty years ago. Building on the strengths of Chapman's original text, this long-awaited 5th edition has been revised and expanded by a team of eminent insect physiologists, bringing it fully up-to-date for the molecular era. The chapters retain the successful structure of the earlier editions, focusing on particular functional systems rather than taxonomic groups and making it easy for students to delve into topics without extensive knowledge of taxonomy. The focus is on form and function, bringing together basic anatomy and physiology and examining how these relate to behaviour. This, combined with nearly 600 clear illustrations, provides a comprehensive understanding of how insects work. Now also featuring a richly illustrated prologue by George McGavin, this is an essential text for students, researchers and applied entomologists alike.

The insects: structure and function.

There is a bewildering diversity of signals, sensory systems, and signaling behavior. A consideration of how these traits affect each other's evolution explains some of this diversity. Natural selection favors signals, receptors, and signaling behavior that maximize the received signals relative to background noise and minimize signal degradation. Properties of sensory systems bias the direction of evolution of the signals that they receive. For example, females may prefer males whose signals they can perceive more easily, and this will lead to the spread of more easily perceived male traits. Environmental conditions during signal transmission and detection also affect signal perception. Specific environmental conditions will bias the evolutionary direction of behavior, which affects the time and place of signaling as well as microhabitat preferences. Increased specialization of microhabitats and signaling behavior may lead to biased evolution of the sensory systems to work more efficiently. Thus, sensory...

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Signals, signal conditions, and the direction of evolution

▪ Abstract This review covers selected literature from 1982 to the present on some of the ecological, behavioral, and biochemical aspects of hydrocarbon use by insects and other arthropods. Major ecological and behavioral topics are species- and gender-recognition, nestmate recognition, task-specific cues, dominance and fertility cues, chemical mimicry, and primer pheromones. Major biochemical topics include chain length regulation, mechanism of hydrocarbon formation, timing of hydrocarbon synthesis and transport, and biosynthesis of volatile hydrocarbon pheromones of Lepidoptera and Coleoptera. In addition, a section is devoted to future research needs in this rapidly growing area of science.

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Ecological, behavioral, and biochemical aspects of insect hydrocarbons*

Lipids of the insect cuticle: origin, composition and function

Some of the most spectacular and diverse traits in animals are the signals used to attract mates. Closely related species often differ dramatically in signaling traits, in spite of similarity in other morphological traits. The idea that reproductive isolation arises when male mating signals and female preferences differ among populations is an old one. However, until recently, there was almost no information on what generates diversity in mating signals and preferences. This is beginning to change, with emerging results that highlight the importance of habitat differences in generating this diversity. Such differences in ecology are at the root of one hypothesis for divergence in sexual signaling – sensory drive. The sensory drive hypothesis focuses on how communication systems adapt to local environments and predicts that divergence in communication systems will occur when environments differ. Reproductive isolation can arise as a byproduct of this adaptive divergence in behavior.

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How sensory drive can promote speciation

The Refugee Health Screener-15 (RHS-15): development and validation of an instrument for anxiety, depression, and PTSD in refugees.

Changement dans la permeabilite cuticulaire et dans la composition en glucides de l'epicuticule chez une lignee isofemelle de D. pseudoobscura etudies pendant 7 annees de culture en masse, effet de la temperature et du sexe

Laboratory evolution of epicuticular hydrocarbon composition and cuticular permeability in drosophila pseudoobscura: effects on sexual dimorphism and thermal-acclimation ability.

Diffusion of water through the arthropopd cuticle: Thermodynamic consideration of the transition phenomenon

The effects of larval and pupal thermal regime on adult transcuticular water loss rates and epicuticular hydrocarbon composition in Drosophila pseudoobscura were determined. Temperatures encountered by the larval stage had no effect, but flies emerging from pupae maintained at 24°C exhibited significantly lower cuticular permeabilities than those emerging from pupae maintained at 17°C. More than 50% of the variance in cuticular permeability was accounted for by variation in the proportion of n-pentacosadiene in the epicuticular hydrocarbons. High transcuticular water loss rates were correlated with higher proportions of relatively short-chain, methyl-branched alkanes and alkadienes. High proportions of longer chain lengths of both branched alkanes and alkadienes were associated with lower cuticular permeabilities. The molecular basis for these findings is discussed.

Effects of rearing temperature on cuticle permeability and epicuticular lipid composition in Drosophila pseudoobscura

Drosophila mojavensis is found in several geographically separate regions of the Sonoran Desert of North America. Within each area, it utilizes different host plants as its primary breeding site. When flies from two of these regions, Baja California and Sonora (including southern Arizona) are raised in the laboratory and then placed together to mate, a significant degree of sexual isolation is observed (Zouros and D’Entremont, 1980; Koepfer, 1987a, b). This isolation is due largely to a failure of Baja males to mate with Sonora females. The factors responsible for the observed isolation have not yet been identified, but they have been demonstrated to have a genetic component by the selection experiments of Koepfer (1987a, b), which makes D. mojavensis a particularly attractive subject for studies of speciation. We have been interested in both the proximate and ultimate causes underlying the sexual isolation between these populations. Our approach to this problem has been to first identify where the behavioral breakdown occurs and then to seek the characters involved. Our long term goal is to understand the evolutionary forces which caused the responsible characters to diverge in the first place.

Eric C. Toolson

Papers

The Refugee Health Screener-15 (RHS-15): development and validation of an instrument for anxiety, depression, and PTSD in refugees.

Laboratory evolution of epicuticular hydrocarbon composition and cuticular permeability in drosophila pseudoobscura: effects on sexual dimorphism and thermal-acclimation ability.

Diffusion of water through the arthropopd cuticle: Thermodynamic consideration of the transition phenomenon

Effects of rearing temperature on cuticle permeability and epicuticular lipid composition in Drosophila pseudoobscura

Temperature Effects on Epicuticular Hydrocarbons and Sexual Isolation in Drosophila mojavensis