INSECTA
In this tab, entitled Insecta, there are several items grouped in three main chapters, "Description of Insects," "Locusts outbreaks" and "Insect-borne diseases". They all have their origin in two works just published, “Bandas, enjambres y devastación” (Almuzara, 2007) and “Insectos y hecatombes”, vol. I-II (RBA 2012-2014). The idea is offering to the reader the chance to consult free of charges the contents and to increase the general knowledge with private commentaries.
Insect description is based on the historical and biological study of locusts, fleas, lice, flies, mosquitoes and some kind of bugs, because all they have had, and use to have a negative influence on man. It’s also included a chapter dedicated to the ticks, though they are not insects.
Locust outbreaks have threatened man from the Neolithic, when it learned the rudiments of agriculture and settled in a permanent place. A swarm of migratory locusts can hold billions of individuals who do not respect the balance of nature and destroy the existing plant mass, breaking completely the food chain and exposing the living beings that are depending on it in a certain death by starvation. The man has seen a really witness, century after century, of these huge disasters that appear and disappear suddenly.
Fleas, lice, mosquitoes, flies or bugs exist on Earth for millions of years and have parasitized man since the beginning of its existence. Despite its tiny size, the ancient authors just described correctly, but only since microscope’s discovery in the seventeenth century it was possible to observe them in great detail and precision.
This work is a natural history of these obligate parasites, diseases caused by its pathogens partners and the impact it has had on the man throughout the centuries. And it should be noted that, despite the great scientific advances, many insects still cause nowadays in humans many serious illness, around on hundred, as plague, epidemic typhus, malaria, yellow fever, dengue, leishmaniasis, filariasis, sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis) and Chagas disease (American trypanosomiasis).
