Dr Pedro Barbosa is a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Entomology of the University of Maryland, College Park. He has been a professor at Rutgers University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and at the University of Maryland. Although his research focused on the ecology of insects and insect-plant interactions, he also has an interest in insect histology. Since his retirement in 2010 he has written several books on insects. Dr Deborah Berry is Co-Director for the Histopathology and Tissue Shared Resource at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Georgetown University, which provides research pathology support for translational cancer research. She has over 20 years' experience in histology with a specialty in the histology of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.  Dr Christina Kary is a scientific editor with the journal Genes & Development at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, New York. Before becoming an editor, she earned a PhD with Dr Eric Baehrecke at the University of Maryland and was a Jane Coffin Childs post-doctoral fellow with Dr Susan Mango at Harvard University.