2021 ASIW Day 1 – July 19

Art and Science in the Woods did not happen in 2020 due to the pandemic. This year marked my return to the Sun Foundation. This time, I was a visiting instructor. The format changed from major and minor classes to a limited number of day long classes supplemented by visiting instructors every day. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to share my knowledge and passion for insects and the biodiversity around us with students in many different classes throughout the week. Many thanks to the instructors who asked me to join their classes during the week.

The first day, I visited the Aboriginal Survival Arts Program (ASAP) class in the afternoon. During the first morning, instructors spent time with their classes and covered what would happen during the entire week. I spent roughly 2 hours with the class during the afternoon. Since this was a survival class, I began the afternoon with a discussion of insects as food and we sampled some cooked crickets and meal-worms (at least some students sampled them). We played my version of insect bingo and the first student to observe sufficient diversity won a prize (which was awarded at the end of the day).

Insect taxa encountered

I provide this list of insect taxa we encountered. They are arranged alphabetically by order and family within each order. These are the families of insects we observed during this class. Please note that each link to more information will open a new browser window/ tab.

Totals for this afternoon – 6 orders, 18 families of insects. We also observed spiders, chiggers, daddy long legs (Opiliones). and other arthropods during the afternoon.

Order Coleoptera (beetles)

Order Diptera (flies)

Order Hemiptera (true bugs)

Order Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps)

Order Lepidoptera (butterflies, moths, skippers)

Order Orthoptera (grasshoppers and crickets)

  • Family Gryllidae (snowy tree cricket in this case)

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