Introduction

This is the lab manual for the University of Northern British Columbia’s third-year Entomology course, BIOL 322. Welcome to the course!

The lab manual will walk you through all of the basic principles you need to know to complete the lab for this course. Whether you are completing the lab online, in person, or through some mixture of these delivery methods, you will need this lab manual for each and every week’s lab.

To complete BIOL 322, you will have to develop and submit an insect collection. Completing this assignment will require the use of robust and ethical collection and preservation techniques. You will also gain an understanding of the importance of biological collections and collecting data. The labs will also teach you about insect structure and function, and how these influence insect biology.

The majority of the labs will focus on how to identify the major orders of insects, and key unfamiliar insects to order, family, or species. You will also learn about the significance of insects in the ecological web and to human society. The majority of this lab manual covers the identification of various orders and families of insects (Orders and Families 2022) that are common in northern British Columbia. I will also mention a few other taxa with which you should be familiar. Some of you may collect additional orders and families, and I will help you to identify those.

**PLEASE NOTE** that the distinguishing characteristics described here may not provide faultless identification of all insect taxa, and should be applied with caution outside this course, and especially outside northern British Columbia. If you are uncertain about an identification, please let me know so we can figure out what you have found.