Insects food requirements

Although many insects nutritionally require ascorbic acid, numerous species have apparently been reared on artificial or synthetic diets without ascorbic acid or related nutrients. These include Diptera and assorted roaches, crickets, beetles, and moths, whose normal food comprises detritus, seeds, carrion, and dry stored products that are deficient in ascorbate for certain vertebrate animals. The general presumption has been that the diets lack vitamin C and that certain insects can biosyn-... 

The Federal Animal Welfare Act (PL 89-544) requires that animal food be stored in facilities which protect it from infestation or contamination by vermin (wild rodents, birds, and insects). Food can be stored in individual animal rooms in vermin-proof containers with lids, such as plastic garbage containers. Ideally, bulk-food shipments should be stored in a room or warehouse where the temperature can be maintained at less than 70"F and the relative humidity at 50% or less. The room should have doors that prevent the entry of rodents or birds. Vermin control is important since wild rodents, birds, and insects can contaminate stored feed with bacteria, viruses, or parasites which could adversely affect laboratory animal health. Pesticides should not be used to control vermin in this area while food supplies are present contamination of food with pesticides can seriously affect experimental results in animals. Boric acid powder can be placed along the walls to control cockroaches, without the negative experimental impact of organophosphate insecticides. 

The Terrestrial Component. These papers illustrate the application of temporal, spatial, and domain connectivity. Chemicals associated with people, food eaten by people, insects, and other organisms that compete with people for food, and other biomass must be identified. Since most of these chemical groups are terrestrial, spatial boundaries such as urban, biome, regional, and global are used. From a system perspective, these boundaries exclude water and air and require that they be placed in the "rest of the system" category. This type of boundary introduces the assumption that food, competitors for food, or any chemical that is discharged to or harvested from the air or water is ignored or assumed to be external to the system studied. 

The development of new insecticides means even more. It requires appraisal of the effect of the material on the operator in all stages of use. It involves knowledge of the amount of residue that may remain on, or in, the part of the product that is used as food for man or beast and the effect of such residue on their health. Leadership in such studies belongs to the toxicologist. The chemist, however, has a very important relation to these problems. He must supply the method for analysis and for removal of insecticidal residues. For some of the new insecticidal chemicals the entomologist has accurate information on their effect on insects. Suitable, satisfactory methods of analyses of the chemical and its residues await determination. 

For a species of insect to survive (to pass through the sieve of Figure 1), its food must contain the nutrients essential for that species. Nutrition used in this narrow sense (as opposed to the broader term insect dietetics) delineates the minimal nutritional requirements for successful growth, development, and reproduction (13). Serving as a nutrient is not an inherent quality of a... 

As alluded to above, even a crop that sustains losses from an insect pest may actually be capable of inhibiting insect growth. A number of aspects of the insect dietetics may be interacting to produce such a situation. The feeding insect must ingest food "that not only meets its nutritional requirements, but is also capable of being assimilated and converted into the energy and structural substances required for normal activity and development" (2,. ... 

A severe type I hypersensitivity reaction such as systemic anaphylaxis (eg, from insect envenomation, ingestion of certain foods, or drug hypersensitivity) requires immediate medical intervention. 

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