Language: English
From the introduction:
"The characteristic tropical climate of the islands of Andaman in the Bay of Bengal, supports a wide variety of timber-yielding plants, which provide unique habitats to numerous timber pests belonging to different orders of insects. These insects particularly in their larval stage cause considerable damage to the wood in its varied forms, in the forest stands, at the timber extraction and logging centres and timber depots, in the wood-based industries and to a variety of wood in human services. Amongst these insects, cerambycids or longicorn beetles occupy a dominant positon so far as their economic importance is concerned. It is well known that the cerambycids are in their greatest abundance in all the tropical insular land masses of the world (Gressitt, 1961}.
However, the progress of research on the economic status, biological peculiarities and environmental relationships of these important pests does not at all commensurate with the economic importance of the group occuring in the islands of Andaman.
Keeping this in view, a special project on the "Ecological interaction and economic status of the xylolophagous insects of the islands of Andaman and Nicobar" was undertaken from August 1978,under the guidance of one the authors. The present contribution is mainly based on the data collected through the field and laboratory studies on some of the most important borers of these islands."