Hugo Hartnac, Arnold Mallis, James R. Busvine, Walter Ebeling, John Gerozisis, Phillip Hadington, Kazuo Yasutomi, and Kenji Umeya.

In their time and in their part of the world, these entomologists brought together in textbooks and handbooks information on the biology and control of household, structural, and public health pests. Their efforts to collect and summarize these data, and to provide their observations and practical experience on insects and other arthropods, have served entomologists and pest control professionals around the world, and are sincerely appreciated.

The goal of this book was to build on the foundation provided by these authors, then to expand the format and provide international coverage. The discipline of urban entomology is changing; it has grown from research and information exchange on a regional basis to international research and cooperation on pests. The modern student and research entomologist needs access to information and a basic understanding of a variety of insects and other arthropods, since distribution and pest status are much less static features of pest species. The objective of this text is to provide a concise and usable reference text on urban and public health insects and other arthropods around the world. In part, this is a global census. Listed here are the invertebrates known to occur, regardless of pest status, in domestic and peridomestic habitats in the urban environment.