ABSTRACT
The insects, with over 900,000 described species, represent the most speciose group of animals (Grimaldi and Engel 2005). From the outset of their considerable evolutionary history, which began during the Devonian period (ca. 400 million years ago), the insects have evolved a wide diversity of morphological and ecological adaptations, reaching an incredibly broad range of environments. One of the most important characteristics of the insects is their multilayered, chitin-protein, exoskeleton that is considered to have been a central development in the evolution of insects (Wigglesworth 1957). Although the exoskeleton provides protection against many predators and pathogens, there is an ecological group of organisms that successfully developed strategies to break through the cuticle and reach the hemocoel. Those are the entomopathogenic fungi.
