Water Balance in Land Arthropods

Writers on arthropod water relationships range from bio- physicists and biochemists to population ecologists-a fact that gives cause to wonder whether the field is already too heterogeneous to be written about in a single book by a single author. I have partly avoided the problem by concentrating largely on physiological mechanisms and by omitting most aspects of behavioural regulation and most aspects of heat balance and body temperature, except when these impinge directly on water balance. Even within this limited field there has been a lot of work during the past twenty years, as a result of which some problems have been solved (or at least more clearly defined), and many others have been opened up. On the whole there has been a welcome change to a more rigorous experimental approach and it is now possible for water balance people to state their problems in physiological terms. Good progress has been made towards understanding the mechanisms involved in nearly all avenues of water uptake and loss, although problems indeed remain. The cuticle has yielded part of its secrets to electron micrography, but ex- ploration by means oflipid biochemistry among other techniques is necessary for a real understanding of cuticle permeability.