Abstract: Considering huge number of insect species in the world, studies of heat shock proteins on insects are still very limited.  Special focus of “Insect heat shock proteins and their underlying functions“ provides a comprehensive knowledge for the given topics, which focuses on the heat shock proteins from four insect species: i) Five heat shock proteins (HSPs) from Cotesia chilonis were identified, and their expressional patterns under different temperatures were examined; ii) two novel HSP70s of Frankliniella occidentalis possessed different family characteristics; iii) less reported T-complex polypeptide 1 (TCP-1) from Chilo suppressalis HSP60 family showed different functions; iv) HSP18.3 of Tribolium castaneum played important roles in stress resistance, development and reproduction.   
The first article regarding five HSPs of C. chilonis from Pan et al. (2018) described the cDNA sequences and genomic DNAs of Cchsp40, Cchsp60, Cchsp70, Cchsc70 and Cchsp90, and their expression levels under low or high temperatures.  The second article about the two HSP70s of F. occidentalis from Qin et al. (2018) examined the full length cDNAs of Fohsc704 and Fohsc705, as well as their positions and size of the introns.  The results also demonstrated that these two HSP70s played important roles in the thermotolerance of F. occidentalis.  The third paper of Yu et al. (2018) detailed the characterization of the Tcp-1 from C. suppressalis.  Genomic analyses indicated that there were no introns in the Tcp-1 gene, but the expression levels of Tcp-1 weren’t induced by temperature stresses.  Finally, Xiong et al. (2018) described the transcriptome profiles of RNA interference (RNAi)-treated larvae (ds-Tchsp18.3) and control larvae of T. castaneum.  The results showed that the knockdown of Tchsp18.3 gene expression affected various stress responses, innate immunity and the antioxidant activity process. 
I genuinely hope that the readers of the Journal of Integrative Agriculture will be interested in these topics, and these papers could provide useful information for their research.  I appreciate all authors give their high-quality contributions and efforts to this special focus.