Micrognome

Medical Entomology for Students. 4th edn. M Service. Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-521-70928-6

Medical Entomology for Students

Mike Service brings his trademark clarity to this fourth edition of his highly regarded introductory textbook of medical entomology. It contains core subject material that has been tought to generations of DTM&H candidates.

Entomology is a very visual branch of the natural sciences and benefits from illustration. One of the strengths of this text is the careful choice of line diagrams that reinforce key differentiating features of disease vectors. In the 4th edition, colour figures have been added to support insect recognition skills.

Other modifications have been made for the fourth edition, particularly in recognition of recent changes in vector control. New transmission cycles for West Nile and Japanese encephalitis viruses have also been included.

The author’s emphasis on clinical and public health relevance runs from cover to cover and has led him, for example, to simplify the nomenclature used for Aedes mosquitoes. He is at pains to remind readers that this is a necessarily selective approach more suited to a subject matter primer, than to an exhaustive reference text. However, the enduring relevance of this book throughout the tropics is a measure of its continuing success.

This book has been recommended as core reading for the FACTM pt 1 exam.

Chapters:  introduction to mosquitoes, Anopheline mosquitoes, Culicine mosquitoes, black-flies, phlebotomine sand-flies, biting midges, horse-flies, tsetse-flies, house-flies and stable-flies, flies and myiasis, fleas, sucking lice, bedbus, triatomine bugs, cockroaches, soft ticks, hard ticks, scabies mites, scrub typhus mites, miscellaneous mites.