When I was asked to serve as moderator for a symposium on the “Economics of Entomological Effort”, I was honored and pleased to accept. The honor became abundantly clear when I received the full details of the symposium and recognized the high caliber of the speakers who would participate. The pleasure to accept derived from the great importance of the subject and my own conviction that neither the public, the scientific community, nor the administrators of research realize fully the economic importance of studies on insects. It is therefore timely that this symposium be held, a symposium that has as its purpose to show how efforts in entomology contribute to public welfare through advances in the discipline and through “spin off” to other areas of science.