The volume is divided into five related parts. Part I, Systematics, Life History, and Diversity, reviews the basic taxonomy and life history diversity of sawflies. Included are comprehensive reviews of sex ratio variation, feeding strategies, and pheromone biology. Part II, Adaptations to Host Plants, discusses several of the very novel ways in which this group has adapted to and countered the evolutionary defenses of its host plants. Adaptations to plant defensive chemistry, stress, and phenology are discussed. Included is a new perspective on the general theory of the relationship between stress and insect susceptibility. Also, a scenario for the evolution of gall induction behavior in sawflies is presented. In Part III, Adaptations to Natural Enemies, the ability of sawflies to avoid or defend against natural enemies is comprehensively reviewed and discussed. These defense mechanisms are integrated with the previously described sawfly-plant integrations. Part IV, Implications of Sawfly Adaptations to Population Dynamics, reviews and analyzes the role of plant communities, environmental conditions, plant architecture, induced resistance, diapause strategies, and microbial symbionts in sawfly population dynamics. In Part V, Life History Traits and Population Patterns, the contributors discuss the relative contribution of the various life history traits to the ability of some species to achieve outbreak population levels. This analysis leads to extremely important insights into why sawflies are such serious pests and increases our understanding of insect population behavior. Finally, the volume concludes with an examination of how attributes of sawflies can facilitate research and contribute to advances in modern theories of plant-herbivore-predator interactions.
