LAUSR

This is the second special issue on the fauna and flora of the Insect Limestone of the Isle of Wight, UK. The first special issue was published in 2014 in the Earth and Environmental Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, volume 104 (parts 3 and 4). For information on the background to this project see Ross (2014). This volume completes the coverage of the study of the fauna and comprises eight papers on fossil vertebrates, crustaceans, cockroaches, earwigs, praying mantises, grasshoppers, crickets, locusts, bugs, beetles, flies and lacewings. There is also a multi-authored overview paper where the fauna and flora are used to interpret the terrestrial palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate at that time. Sadly, four more project members died over the past few years: Dr Anatoly Alexeev (02/03/1924–04/06/2013) of the Paleontological Institute, Moscow (Fig. 1); Dr Gennady Dlussky of Moscow State University (Rasnitsyn 2014; Reznikova 2014; Barden 2018); Dr Yuri Popov of the Paleontological Institute, Moscow (Fig. 2) (http://palaeoentomolog.ru/obituary.html); and Dr Ian Slipper of the University of Greenwich (Horne 2017). For the Isle of Wight project, Anatoly studied the jewel and click beetles, Gennady studied the ants, Yuri studied the true bugs and Ian made a significant contribution to the paper on crustaceans. Without their dedicated input the study of the fauna of the Insect Limestone would have been impoverished. This volume is dedicated to them.