FFS farmers learn about collecting insects.
How to collect insects?
- By hand
- Provide plastic bags or boxes
- Use an aspirator for collecting small insects
- Use a water pan
- Search all plant parts and near plants
- Stem
- Leaves
- Flowers
- Fruits
- Roots
- Soil
- On weeds
- Sweep nets
- Use them to catch flying insects
- Traps
- Use sticky traps to discover small insects (pests, natural enemies, neutrals)
- Pitfall trap to catch insects that walk on the ground
- Light traps
Why collect insects?
- For identification
- Know what is there: pests, natural enemies, neutrals.
- For insect zoo.
- Study life cycles
- Study behavior: feeding habits, parasitization, etc.
- Set small experiments
- For preservation.
- Make a reference collection