Lacewings in the Crop Environment is the first book to seriously address the lacewings since Biology of the Chrysopidae (Canard et al., 1984). In the intervening period a number of important developments have been made in the field and this new book is thus greatly overdue.

The book addresses both the theoretical and practical aspects of lacewing biology and their use in crop protection. It provides a summary of many recent developments and information which has hitherto been scattered in the primary scientific literature, and some upto-date examples of lacewings as biological control agents in a variety of crop contexts.

The book is divided into five parts. Part 1 deals with lacewing systematics and ecology and provides a background to the subject area. The taxonomic nomenclature used in this book was frozen at July 2000. Thus, any taxonomic changes or advances made after that point are not included in the text. For examples, because of the past widespread use of ‘Chrysopa’ as a holding genus, it is almost inevitable that some names used in this book may reflect older practice. We have attempted to standardise these, by using the generic combinations included in the revision by Brooks & Barnard (1990), but some ambiguities and misidentifications may persist. We have not attempted to differentiate formally between use of Mallada and Dichochrysa, as a number of the species properly referable to the latter have not been critically appraised or transferred formally from Mallada. In such cases, we have followed the generic allocation adopted by individual authors.