'A funny and beautifully written welcome to the enigmatic, weird and wonderful world of wasps' DAVE GOULSON, author of SILENT EARTH There may be no insect with a worse reputation than the wasp, and none guarding so many undiscovered wonders. Where bees and ants have long been the darlings of the insect world, wasps are much older, cleverer and more diverse. They are the bee's evolutionary ancestors - flying 100 million years earlier - and today they are just as essential for the survival of our environment. A bee, ecologist Professor Seirian Sumner argues, is just a wasp that has forgotten how to hunt. For readers of Entangled Life, Other Minds and The Gospel of Eels, this is a book to upturn your expectations about one overlooked animal and the wider architecture of our natural world. With endless surprises, this book might teach you about the wasps that spend their entire lives sealed inside a fig, about stinging wasps, about parasitic wasps, about wasps that turn cockroaches into living zombies, about how wasps taught us to make paper. It offers up a maligned insect in all its diverse, unexpected splendour; as both predator and pollinator, the wasp is an essential pest controller worldwide. Inside their sophisticated social worlds is the best model we have for the earth's major evolutionary transitions. In their understudied biology are clues to progressing medicine, including a possible cure for cancer. The closer you look at these spurned, winged insects - both custodians and bouncers of our planet - the more you see. Their secrets have so far gone mostly untapped, but the potential of the wasp is endless.

Crop Protection, Volume 55, the latest release in the Advances in Insect Physiology series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters on RNAi Plus, where microbes enhance RNAi: Mechanism and Applications, Symbionts in whiteflies, miRNAs from the microbiome as drivers in the insect, a critical view on insect microbiome data analysis and interpretation, Insect-microbe interactions and transmission as shaped by future climate changes, Intestinal bacteria of the German cockroach and its interaction with entomopathogenic fungus, and Beyond Baculovirus: Alternative biotechnological platforms and pest control based on insect viruses.

Insect Molecular Genetics: An Introduction to Principles and Applications, Fourth Edition provides the most recent advances and research in entomology and molecular genetics. It demonstrates the role molecular genetics plays in pest management and basic insect biology research, assuming readers have little to no prior knowledge on the subject. This newest edition features updates on the latest trends and discoveries, such as CRISPR-Cas genome editing methods, epigenetic inheritance, DNA amplification techniques, and molecular phylogenies. Certain chapter topics, including P-element mediated transformation and insect population molecular techniques, are condensed and updated to create a more comprehensive and concise read. This foundational text is a valuable resource for entomologists with limited training in molecular genetics, and will be an ideal source for pest control advisors who need to understand the vocabulary and methods that are used to solve entomological issues. Contains a new chapter on CRISPR-CAS and the basic biology of these systems related to arthropods Includes new and updated methods and examples of insect gene modification, along with discussions of regulatory and ethical issues Offers compiled and comprehensive terminology at the introductory level Illustrated with diagrams and tables to further explain key topics and concepts

A BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED LOOK AT THE LIVES AND MIND-BOGGLING BEHAVIOURS OF INSECTS How to Read an Insect takes you on an unforgettable tour of the insect world, presenting these amazing creatures as you have never seen them before. This stunningly illustrated guide puts a wealth of fascinating behaviours under the microscope - from elegant displays of courtship to brutal acts of predation. Along the way, Ross Piper charts the evolution of insects and reveals everything you need to know about how they nest, feed, reproduce and defend themselves. He concludes by discussing the impact of the human world on insects, and what we can do to prevent their decline in numbers. * Explores the remarkable lifestyles of exotic insects as well as those in your own garden. * Includes highlights from a wide range of new insect behaviour studies. * Features a wealth of breathtaking colour photos, illustrations, and graphics.