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What exactly is our relationship with insects? Are they more beneficial or harmful? What role do they play in the world? What are the effects of climate change: Will the number of insects continue to increase? This book discusses the beneficial and harmful effects of insects and explains their development and significance for biodiversity. This second, fully reviewed and enlarged, edition provides new insights, especially about the value of specific insect species that are generally seen as pests (e.g. ants and moths), as well as an extended chapter on the development of insects and especially their decline in different regions in the world, the industrialized countries in particular. Numerous info graphics show connections between changes in the environment due to human expansion and the number of insects and species. Studies from the US, Canada, Asia, Africa, Europe and Switzerland are used to point out the dramatic reduction of biodiversity. New tables illustrate these developments. The glossary as well as the insects index is extended, the text, tables, pictures and graphs provide even more well-rounded image. Readers will find the argumentation even more clearly and detailed.

This book discusses the beneficial and harmful effects of insects and explains their development and significance for biodiversity.Threatening pests or threatened beneficials? Biting midges are wonderful insects. The animals are so tiny and uniquely shaped that they are particularly good at pollinating the small and tight flowers of the cocoa tree. Without them, there would be much less chocolate. We associate other insects more with the damage that they cause. Mosquitoes and wasps bite us. Moth larvae damage textiles and contaminate foods. Ants undermine our paths and flies are just a pain.But what exactly is our relationship with insects? Are they more beneficial or harmful? What role do they play in the world? What are the effects of climate change: Will the number of insects continue to increase?

It was gratifying to be invited to prepare a third edition of this book, which first appeared in 1951. Preliminary discussions with the publishers, however, revealed a considerable challenge in the present high costs of printing, so that changes and some improvements were clearly necessary to justify the venture. It was immediately apparent that the chapter on chemical control measures would have to be substantially re-written, because of the great changes in usage due to resistance and the regulations introduced to prevent environmental pollution. Also, I decided to expand the scope of the book by increased coverage of the pests of continental Europe and North America, including some new figures and keys in the Appendix. These two undertakings resulted in considerable expansion in length, with about 370 new references and 250 additional specific names in the Index. In order to avoid too alarming an increase in price, I decided to sacrifice three chapters from the earlier editions: those dealing with the structure and classification of insects, their anatomy and physiology, and their ecology. Readers who require basic biological information on insects should buy one of the various short introductions to entomology available.