Ian Thornton is an eminent entomologist and biogeographer. He is an international authority on the Psocoptera, a worldwide family of small winged or wingless insects that feed on vegetable fibre, including paper. He has used his deep knowledge of these ubiquitous insects to develop and test hypotheses about insect distribution on the oceanic islands of the Pacific and surrounding lands. For the past decade he has led the most intensive study yet undertaken on the recolonisation of the islands of Krakatau and Anak Krakatau, the results of which are challenging prevailing ideas of island biogeography.