This semester I took my final full time class to qualify for the Master's degree at LSU, and it was my favourite class I've taken so far. The class was Insect Taxonomy and taught by Dr. Chris Carlton and Victoria Bayliss. The class material consisted of learning the life history and key characteristics for identification of over 200 total families of beetles, flies, moths and butterflies, bees and wasps, and other insect groups. We also had a lab each week where we put this knowledge into practice by identifying specimens presented to us using dichotomous keys, our notes, pictures in books and on the internet (
www.bugguide.net is an excellent resource), and the guide of our teachers.
One of the main requirements of the course was to assemble an insect collection. This needed to include 150 different insect families as well as additional specimens. Unfortunately I wasn't all that stoked with my final collection, which is far from a perfect example as you can see below. However, I enjoyed the course so much I intend to start my own personal collection, while the knowledge of identifying insects I gained from the course will also be immensely important for my research, where I am currently collecting many species of fly, wasp and beetle from inside galls of
Phragmites australis, such as the cool-looking beetle and wasp in this post.
