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Insect Ecomorphology

Linking Functional Insect Morphology to Ecology and Evolution

  • 1st Edition - February 25, 2025
  • Latest edition
  • Editor: Oliver Betz
  • Language: English

**2026 PROSE Award Category Winner in Biology**Insect Ecomorphology: Linking Functional Insect Morphology to Ecology and Evolution offers up-to-date knowledge and understanding of… Read more

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Description

**2026 PROSE Award Category Winner in Biology**

Insect Ecomorphology: Linking Functional Insect Morphology to Ecology and Evolution offers up-to-date knowledge and understanding of the morphology of insects and the functional basis of their diversity. This book covers the form and function of insect body structures in relation to their physiological performance capabilities, biological roles, and evolutionary histories. Written by international experts, the book explores the ecomorphology of functional systems such as insect feeding, locomotion, sensing, and egg laying. The combination of conceptual and review chapters, methodological approaches, and case studies enables readers to delve into active research fields and to gain an understanding of the form-function-performance paradigm.

This book uncovers key structures of the various regions of the insect body, elucidates their function, and investigates their ecological and evolutionary implications. Insect Ecomorphology is thus a vital resource for entomologists, biologists, and zoologists, especially those seeking to understand more fully the morphology and physiological impacts of insects in correlation to their environments and to evolution.

Key features

  • Integrates traditionally separate fields of research with the aim of understanding insect morphology, ecology, and evolution
  • Considers the impacts of insect ecomorphology on biomimetic applications
  • Includes conceptual and methodological chapters to help readers appreciate the ways in which ecomorphological studies are performed

Readership

Researchers and practitioners in entomology, zoology, morphology, ecology, and evolutionary biology, Advanced undergraduate and graduate students in biology, entomology, zoology, paleontology, and evolutionary studies, engineers and biomimeticists

Table of contents

Part I: Conceptual Issues

1. Introduction

2. Conceptual and methodological issues in insect ecomorphology

Part II: Ecomorphology of the Insect Body

3. Ecomorphology of the insect head with a focus on the mouthparts of adults

4. Reflections of an insect's lifestyle and habitat: Morphological and ultrastructural adaptations involving the eyes of insects

5. Ecomorphology of insect flight

6. Ecomorphology of polypedal locomotion

7. Ecomorphology and evolution of tarsal and pretarsal attachment organs in insects

8. Ecomorphology of insect ovipositors

9. Insect antennae and olfactory sensilla – aspects of odorant capture and water conservation

10. Ecomorphology of insect mechanosensilla

Part III: Methodological Approaches

11. Methods for biomechanical characterization of insect cuticle

12. Shaping up: morphometric approaches to understanding insect behavioral ecology and ecomorphology

Part IV: Case Studies

13. Morphological adaptations of beetles to changing living conditions in the Permian and the Mesozoic

14. Ecomorphology of microinsects

15. Nectar-feeding ecology, ecomorphological adaptations, and variation of proboscis length in a long-proboscid fly (Diptera: Nemestrinidae: Prosoeca)

16. Ecomorphology of ants

Part V: Biomimetics

17. Ways in which insect biomimetics can benefit from ecomorphological research and vice versa

Review quotes

"...a discussion of the ethical challenges of using animal models and the prospects of replacing them with digital simulations... government regulation in Europe is pushing toward the elimination of animal models... making viable replacements more urgent... Green surveys some of the options under consideration for animal replacement and demonstrates that if these efforts are to be successful, they will require important changes in accepted standards regarding translational research and the ethical conduct of that research.. Above all else, this book is a reminder that the animals are what truly matter, not the individuals who study them, and certainly not the tools we use when plying our trade. They all work... And, if we do things the right way, these tools improve our understanding of insects. This is what it has always been about, even if today’s fleeting scientific fashions occasionally suggest otherwise." By Richard Gawne, Nevada State Museum, The Quarterly Review of Biology, March 2026.

Product details

  • Edition: 1
  • Latest edition
  • Published: June 2, 2025
  • Language: English

About the editor

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Oliver Betz

Oliver Betz obtained a Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of Bayreuth in Germany for his work on the morphology, function, and evolution of the prey-capture apparatus in Stenus rove beetles. He then became interested in the broader fields of functional and ecological morphology and became an assistant professor in ecology and zoology in 2002 at the University of Kiel, Germany. Since 2004, Oliver has been a full professor of Evolutionary Biology of Invertebrates at the Biology Department at the University of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. His research focuses on the functional and ecological morphology of insects, with a focus on the integration of morphology and ecology to improve the understanding of the function of morphological structures in their ecological and evolutionary context.

Affiliations and expertise
University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

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