Professor Allen Carson Cohen will be teaching the Fundamentals of Insect Rearing in May and June of 2024. This popular course will start on May 7 and continue to June 13, 2024. The format of the course is 12=two hour lectures, discussions, and questions/answers. The time of this real-time, interactive course is 11:00 am to 1:00 pm (Eastern Time) every Tuesday and Thursday.
The course is rich with videos of insect rearing dynamics, lots of visual materials and instruction in all aspects of rearing aimed at entry-level through intermediate level participants.
| Unit/Lesson Name | Time Allotted | Content Description and/or Purpose |
| Unit 1: May 7, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Topic 1: To develop a unified understanding of the purposes of insect rearing systems, experimental design for rearing systems, who rears insects and why? |
| Unit 2: May 9, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Topic 2: Diets: Overview of Insect Nutrition and MetabolismBasics of insect nutrition and dietetics, essentiality concept |
| Unit 3: May 14, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Topic 3: Feeding Biology and Matching Diets with Feeding Biology; mouthparts, gut structure, excretion related to foods eaten by our insects. |
| Unit 4: May 16, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Topic 4: Diet-Making and Presentation: diet preparation processes, mixing, heating, delivery, presentation |
| Unit 5: May 21, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Topic 5: Diet Development and Optimization: how do we develop diets? How do we optimize diets? More applications of design of experiments |
| Unit 6: May 23, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Topic 6: Diets: Diet Components—Chemical and Physical InteractionsAlso: Insectaries and Insect Rearing Equipment |
| Unit 7: May 28, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Topic 7: Insectaries and Insect Rearing EquipmentAlso: Domestication & Colonization |
| Unit 8: May 30, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Topic 8: Consequences and managing colonized insects. What happens to our insects that we are domesticating by our rearing practices? |
| Unit 9: June 4, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Microbial Relations in Rearing Systems. What are the pathogens, symbionts, and other microbes associated with rearing? |
| Unit 10: June 6, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Reducing Error and Stress in Rearing Systems 1. How and why to use routine data collection and analysis to identify problems in our rearing systems. |
| Unit 11: June 11, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Reducing Error and Stress in Rearing Systems 2. How and what do we do to solve the rearing problems, inconsistencies, and other issues in our rearing systems? |
| Unit 12: June 13, 2024 | 2.0 hours (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EST) | Quality Control of Reared Insects and Process Control. How do we develop SOPs and other aspects of quality control? |