The Natural World and Insects: The Multiple Modalities for Insects to Perceive the Environment

Dear Colleagues,

The multimodal sensory integration of environmental cues that an insect will utilize to interpret and react properly to any information required for its survival and evolution is the subject of this Special Issue, which focuses on behavioral, molecular, genetic, neurobiological, and evolutionary elements of this process. When RNA editing and ribosome peptide editing are discovered in the family of insect chemosensory proteins, the insect's sense of smell becomes extremely close to the genetic mechanisms found in the visual and auditory systems, as well as the protein recoding mechanisms primarily described in the Central Nervous System. Ranging from insects to mammals, these mechanisms include the cytoskeletal components, the proteins involved in synaptic transmission, sodium channels, neurotransmitters and glutamate receptors, opsins, the "chicken" Slo gene (calcium-activated (BK) potassium channels), and the Down syndrome cell adhesion molecule (DSCAM). Because of their wide range of signaling behaviors—including the bee brain, cricket’s hearing tympanic organs, moth antennae with hundreds of odor receptors, fly and dragonfly compound eyes with thousands of lenses, and other peripheral sensory organs—insects are excellent models for studying and analyzing signal generation and perception in the context of neural processing, ecology, evolution, and genetics applied to the animal kingdom.

Together with MDPI’s Insects, we seek to compile an extensive collection of expert publications on insect sensory communication and information processing, largely covering the most recent advancements in science and highlighting most important topics in insect sensory biological science research.

Prof. Dr. Jean-François Picimbon
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Insects is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.