Essential Insect Physiology

This textbook is the first to teach insect physiology and biology specifically to students who lack a strong background in biochemistry and molecular biology. Avoiding taxonomic language and supported with high-quality figures, chapter summaries, end-of-chapter review questions, and a suite of PowerPoint slides for use in teaching, it describes the fundamental processes. These include moulting and metamorphosis, digestion of food, nerve and muscle function, flight, biological rhythms, circulation and breathing, immunity, how climate and climate change have, and are, affecting insects, and the use of new manipulation of the genome in insect biology and control.

Introducing the topic with the story of insect development in Chapter 1, this text makes insect physiology and biology genuinely interesting to students, right through to the final chapter, which discusses studies in editing the insect genome.

1. Development: Molting, Metamorphosis, and Diapause
2. The Integument
3. Digestion and Nutrition
4. Neuromuscular Physiology
5. Flight Physiology
6. Biological Rhythms
7. Circulatory Physiology
8. The Tracheal System and Respiration
9. Maintaining Homeostasis
10. Physiology of Defense
11. Sensing the Environment
12. Reproduction
13. Embryogenesis
14. Global Climate Change
15. Insect Physiology In the Era of Genomics and Gene Editing