Heliothine moths are major agricultural pests worldwide attacking a wide range of food and fibre crops. The direct costs to farmers of crop damage and control measures are enormous - Helicoverpa and Heliothis species account for billions of dollars lost worldwide each year. This book is a base-line resource for research into new Helicoverpa/Heliothis control methods. Written for the non-taxonomist, purely taxonomic information is separated from that more widely required by most researchers. This work is relevant to everyone involved in Helicoverpa/Heliothis control. General, concise summaries of the agricultural importance of heliothines, their biology, systematic, and morphology are given. An up-to-date summary of heliothine phylogeny - based on morphological and molecular information - provides a framework for organizing and interpreting biological information about all heliothine moths and has worldwide relevance. The 38 Australian heliothine species are detailed with identification information and individual species treatments. All species are illustrated in color, and there are many color photographs of immature stages and live adults.
Additionally, there are 351 black and white images. Nomenclatural information of interest to taxonomists appears in an appendix, and includes a full checklist and detailed information of type specimens. A CD-ROM packaged with the book contains a searchable database of all 14,800 Australian heliothine specimens examined; this is a major research tool in itself. The CD-ROM also carries nomenclatural information suitable for loading into bioinformatics packages, and images of type specimens.