Economically Important Wood Feeding Insects: Their Diversity, Damage and Diagnostics

Abstract

Wood feeding insects are the economically important group of arthropods that cause severe damage to the agricultural, horticultural crops and forest trees. These primarily belong to the orders Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera and Blattodea of class Insecta under phylum Arthropoda. The larvae of wood feeding insects are the most damaging stages that feed on the internal tissues of wood and make tunnels and galleries inside the stem of a tree or a plant. As a result the xylem and phloem tissues of the plant get disrupted and the branches dry and die subsequently. The economic losses due to these wood boring insects are huge and enormous in various parts of the world. The morphological identification and species diagnostic characters are very important especially for the major groups of wood feeding insects to detect and strategize the management options to curb the losses. So, the present chapter deals with the major wood feeding insects, their species diversity, nature of damage and the diagnostic characters.