Online determination of forest insects

> to the determination key

The Department of Forest Zoology is cooperating with the Ecoinformatics in working on a project about the “Online Identification of Forest Insects”. This project is in line with the ELAN-Connection (eLearning-Academic Network Niedersachsen) of several universities and polytechnics in Lower Saxony.
The project aims at establishing an online study concept in order to supplement and support the existing determination keys and practical entomology courses. The online determination key for forest insects will be used in lectures and courses as well as by students working from home. In former times, students had problems with the conditions and situations they were in when taking insect identification courses (disadvantegeous course times, high number of students per course, few supervising tutors, insufficient number of binoculars). The main objective of the project is to improve the students’ learning conditions and to support autonomous learning.
The online identification key is created in such a way that the insect (and its family, genus and species if required) can be identified by following a so-called dichotomic identification path. Each identification step allows two possible answers with regard to a specific trait. Additional information and explanations, detail pictures and a glossary will support succesful identifications. There will be several ways to begin the identification either by starting right away with the insect or by starting with the tree species, the dispersal area or the typical pattern of damage.
Having identified the species, the students will find high-resolution pictures of whole beetles and of characteristic details which will enable them to check their determination. The insect photos will also be made available for teaching and lectures. The shown details of anatomic characteristics provide a wide range of information and thus support the students in learning to identify different groups of insects.
The intended high-resulution quality of the macro pictures – in particular of body appendages of insects – requires numerous and complicated multi-focus layered photographs which is then transformed into a perfectly sharp picture by a special software. The project is challenged by this most complicated process and the extremely large number of species to be included in the determination key of forest insects, which is a very time-consuming task. The completion of the whole key will take several years.
During the first year of sponsonship, the family of scolytidae (bark beetles) – one of the most important family of forest insects – has been completed. Within the following year, the determination key for cerambycidae (longhorn beetles) was added and the link for starting the identification from the level of coleoptera (beetles) was established.
By using the eLearning “Online Determination Key”, students are given the possibility of adjusting their studying to their own abilities and personal speed of learning. They have the opportunity to practise insect identification with the determination key and to reach the required level of knowledge of insect species.