Insect Taxonomy and Field Sampling Skills

Insects are the most diverse group of organisms with an estimated 10 million species worldwide of which only an estimated 10% have sofar been scientifically described. At the same time, insect populations are currently facing an unprecedented decline both in the UK and globally. This loss of species is not only catastrophic from a biodiversity and ecosystem-health perspective due to resulting direct impacts on insect predators such as birds, reptiles and mammals. Human society will also suffer due to insect’s beneficial role as natural pest controllers and pollinators in agricultural settings; many common commercial plants, for example, depend on insect pollinators to produce high quality fruits such as apples, cucumbers and coffee beans. In order to have any hope of reversing this decline, we need both to employ the most appropriate surveying techniques to monitor insect population changes and we need high-level taxonomic expertise to accurately identify the species sampled to assess their conservation status. Sadly, the widespread teaching of taxonomic skills in undergraduate biology courses has practically disappeared in the UK and the country is therefore facing an urgent need to develop these skills in our postgraduate students. In this 5-day residential course in Oxford, we aim to firstly equip doctoral students with basic insect identification and field surveying skills including modern techniques such as the use of eDNA and DNA barcoding and secondly to train students to specifically identify the two main groups of UK pollinators; aculeate bees and hoverflies. The course will be primarily taught by experts from the renowned Oxford University Museum of Natural History (hereafter OUMNH) supported by external consultants and entomologists from the Oxford University Departments of Biology (hereafter OUDB) and Continuing Education (hereafter OUDCE). The content will be taught by experienced educators through a mixture of practical field work in Wytham Woods, workshops and seminars on key insect groups and sampling techniques, and self-paced expert-led practical sessions where students will identify bees and hoverflies using microscopes and ID keys. To support the in-person teaching and promote more in-depth and reflective learning, an online component to the course will be developed consisting of two synchronous introductory online lectures, which will be recorded, and a dedicated site on the university’s virtual learning environment hosting general overview information on insect morphology, survey techniques, use of museum collections and further resources. After the course these online resources, will be repurposed into a freely available stand-alone self-directed mini-course to further promote entomology and insect taxonomy to ecologists and biologists. The course will benefit participating NERC funded doctoral students in the short-term through enhancing the quality of their own entomological research, and the wider entomology community in the long-term by participants sharing the knowledge they have gained with undergraduate students via their own university teaching and/or with volunteers in natural history and conservation organisations during their post-academic career. Training a cohort of doctoral students in insect ID skills will thus promote the research on beneficial insects such as pollinators, as well as more generally grow the number of UK trained professional insect taxonomists, which, alongside the many enthusiastic amateur entomologists around the country, are needed to ensure that the UK has sufficient capacity to effectively monitor insect populations and provide evidence-based advice to policy-makers, the agricultural industry and conservationists.