This book originated in the 20th Symposium of the Royal Entomological Society on 'Insect Movement', held in London during September 1999. It is now over a quarter of a century since a previous symposium of the Society on a similar theme, namely 'Insect Flight', which was the subject of the 7th Symposium in 1973 (Rainey, 1976). In this introductory chapter, we briefly review progress and identify some of the 'landmark' developments during the intervening period. The present book is broader in scope than the 1976 one, as it includes material on pedestrian movements as well as flight (for example, the movement of army ants, see Chapters 13 and 14). Moreover, as the title of this book suggests, we have not only included chapters on what might be called the mechanisms of movement (e.g. flight biomechanics, physiology and behaviour), but also some of its consequences for population structure and gene flow, and for geographical changes in species' ranges. Also, the more practically orientated chapters tend to be directed towards conservation goals (e.g. Chapters 14, 18 and 19), rather than towards pest management, as were some of the contributions to Rainey (1976) and several more recent books on insect movement (e.g. Goldsworthy and Wheeler, 1989; Drake and Gatehouse, 1995).
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