The Insects Structure and Function

Reginald Chapman’s The Insects: Structure and Function has been the preeminent textbook for insect physiologists for the past 43 years (since the moon landing, in fact). For generations of students, teachers and researchers The Insects has provided the conceptual framework explaining how insects work. Without this book, the lives of entomologists worldwide would have been substantially more difficult. Nevertheless, the most recent (fourth) edition of this remarkable book was published in 1998, and a great deal has happened since then. Sadly, Reg died in 2003 and there was no reasonable prospect of any other person taking on the next revision single-handed. We have decided to take a different approach: to invite a team of eminent insect physiologists to bring their expertise to the collective enterprise of writing the fifth edition of The Insects.