 Dear students, we are going to perform the activity of field wizard for collection of different developmental stages of insects belonging to different orders. Insects are polyfagus, they attack on different plants like aphids, they are present on the backside of the leaves, on the soft leaves, on the new leaves of the plants or other insects are also present on different plants. So we have to use the variety of vegetation like orchards, fields, crops, vegetable fields, flowering flowers. So you can use variety of habitat to collect the variety of insects. If you use variety of methods, then you will get variety of insects because with one method, sweep net, leaf litter, trap method, beating tree method, you will get only one variety of insects. As long as you don't use variety of collection methods, you won't get a variety of insects. And apart from this, you have to look at the weather as well. The insects that you will get in March, April, they will not be available in June, July, and they will not be available in October, November. Apart from this, in the collection of insects, if you have collected insects, then you will get larval stages or immature stages. If you are getting them in March, April, then you can collect them after a few months, one month, 20 days after, so that you get their mature stages. And vegetation is also specific that if you get a male from an insect, then you will get a female from a nearby plant. You have to look at the temperature, rainfall, humidity, wind, all these A-biotic factors must also be looked at that you will not get insects in June, July, and in the afternoon. You will have to look at them in the early morning and in the evening. You will not get insects in rainfall at high temperatures. If there is too much wind, then insects will get disturbed. So, you have to focus on these kinds of A-biotic factors. And apart from this, where you have collected insects, micro and macro habitat, then you have to record longitude and latitude, which you record with GPS. And you also have to use a data book. When you go to the field, then with all the equipment that you have, field equipment, field kit that you have, sweep net, bottles, wires, collection jars. Apart from this, there will be a sheet for the beet tree method, stick, goggles, gloves, glasses, sunscreen, mosquito repellent, then you have to take all these equipment to the field. And all these things are necessary. Apart from this, GPS to record longitude and latitude. Apart from this, you have to fill the data book on which A-biotic factor, that time temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind, all these factors, A-biotic factor, micro habitat, macro habitat. For example, if you have insect, micro habitat, that is the field. If you are taking it from any crop, wheat crop, that is micro habitat. And from the plant, leaf or stem that you have got, that is micro habitat. So, you have to record micro- and macro habitat in their data book. All A-biotic factors you have to record in the data book. It is the simplest method. In hand picking method, we collect the small insects, soft-bodied insects like beetles, aphids, bugs and other small insects that are very fragile and soft-bodied. And we pick them very gently, very politely. We can use the small brush, any other vials like this. You can see the ladybird beetle on this flower. Now I pick it like in this way, gently. I just attach the bottle on this flower and ladybird beetle gently move into the bottle and then I closed it with my thumb. As you can see the ladybird beetle is moving in the vial. You can tap it to see the movement of ladybird beetle and then just close the bottle using this plastic cover lid. Another method of insect collection. We can collect the insect from the trees. We just tap the trees and remove their bark. So you can tap the tree like this and remove the bark. If you remove the bark, you will see the insects. See how the spider has moved here. See how I have kept it on the vial gently and the spider has come into the vial in the glass vial and you can close it with any finger and then cover it with a lid. This is a raccoon. This is another method of insect collection. We can just remove the bark, we can tap the tree and insects will move and you can collect the insects. There are many snails as well. You can see the snails and other insects like ants. These are the ants, colony of ants. These are the snails as well. Within the single plant you can see the diversity of insects like snails, beetles, spiders and ants. This is the exact ecology and diversity of the insects. They share the same habitat with other insects and they play a role in the food chain and food web as well. There is another insect on this plant. You can gently pick this insect as well. You can also pick this gently. Insects like butterflies, moth, or wasps and other insects like honeybees like we can catch them with aerial netting. As you have seen we caught these butterflies in the sweep net and they move in the triangular net. After that we can save them in any vial container, jam bottle, coffee bottle, any glass bottle for further preservation and taxonomic study. You can gently shift these butterflies in any container with this triangular cotton net. You can see that the butterfly has come in the glass bottle with the sweep net. You can also tap and move the butterfly. After that you can gently cover it with a lid. You can see that if you tap the glass bottle you can see the butterfly moving. In addition to butterfly, you can collect the honeybees, dragonflies, moths, wasps, flying insects, and aerial insects using the aerial netting method. This method is another method of insect collection. As you can see this field students use plastic glasses or glass bottles like jam bottles, coffee bottles, empty coffee bottles, and glass bottles to put traps in the field. They add carousel oil and glycerin solution to the field. This is why insects move on the ground and put on the soil at equal level. You can see the pitfall traps. The insects move on the soil and fall in the pitfall trap. We collect the insect's diversity after two days, morning, or evening. This gives us ground diversity. The insect's variety is available in any field for comparison. Now we are going to explain the pitfall trap. How we can insert the trap in the field? As you can see we are just digging the soil to insert the bottle in the soil to insert the pitfall trap in the soil. It should be on the level of the soil so insects should not identify that there is something dangerous for them. If the pitfall trap falls on the soil and the insect moves on the soil, then the pitfall trap falls on the soil. If the level of the pitfall trap falls on the soil, then the insect will be alerted and they will have an idea that there is something different here and they will identify it and cross the pitfall trap. If we cross the pitfall trap, then we have to keep the level of the pitfall trap exactly equal to the soil of the field so that the insects don't have an idea that there is something dangerous for them. In this way, you can define the rows in the field at a distance of at least five rows and you can insert the trap in the field at a distance of at least 15 or 10 traps. You can insert the trap in the field like this and then in the morning or evening time you can collect them and in the pitfall trap, we will use the solution of glycerin, carousel oil, because this is a sunny environment and the solution will evaporate. You can see that pitfall trap is equal to the ground level and insects could not identify this trap. Insects will move around this pitfall trap and insects will fall easily in this trap. Now you can fill this trap with carousel oil and glycerin with the solution of glycerin and carousel oils 70 to 30 percent. Glycerin should be 30 and carousel oil should be 70 percent. For demonstration, I am only just adding the simple water in this trap but for collection of insects you have to use the alcohol. Insects will trap in this pitfall trap and you can collect the insect after two days in the morning or evening by removing this pitfall trap from the ground. Now we are going to use another method for insect collection. This is the beet tree method. For beet tree method we need a simple white sheet to spread under the tree like this small tree and stick to beet tree and collection wires. In beet tree method we can collect the insects that are present on the foliage like on the trees in the orchards are other insects that are other pests that attack on the different plants in the orchards. Now we will perform the beet tree method. Just spread the sheet under the tree. Gently spread the white sheet under the tree and gently beat the tree with the using the stick. Now gently beat the tree. You can jerk the tree as well. You can see the insects are moving although these are not insects these are spiders, rachnida class, not insecta class. This is spider as you can see we collected spider as well it belongs to the rachnida class this is not the insect it belongs to rachnida and insects belong to the rachnida class. There are many differences between the insects and rachnids. The most important thing is that in different collection methods you will not only collect the insects but also rachnids are also present on the trees on different vegetation. So in your collection you will also collect some rachnids as well within the insects. Rachnids are totally different from the insects they have very different characters like spider has very different characters from the insects. So don't confuse with the rachnids and insects. You are using different methods for insect collection so in your collection you will also collect rachnids and insects as well. Leaf litter method litter is composed of pollen leaves twigs and bark of the trees. Litter also have a variety of insects like millipedes, centipedes, earthworms, bugs, beetles and ants and you can see the different insects moving in it. Variety of insects are present in it and since this leaf litter is a little dry if the leaf litter is damp then you will get more insects. Since this leaf litter is dry then there are not so many insects in it. We can only see ants here. Millipedes, centipedes etc. are not present in the damp places. If the leaf litter is a little damp then we can see them. By using leaf litter method you will collect the millipedes, centipedes, bugs, beetles, ants and earthworms from the leaf litter. For thorny vegetation in which very small type of insects are present we use aspirator. Aspirator is an instrument that is used for collection of insects when vegetation is thorny and by using aspirator we collect the very small number of very small size insects. By using aspirator we suck the insects in that U-shaped funnel. This works on the method of sucking and there is a cotton cotton cloth inside the aspirator. When aspirators suck the insects they all fall on the cloth that we will collect after the collection. Another method for collection of insects are traps. There are many different types of traps like yellow light trap, pan trap, burly funnel trap. So these different traps are used to attract the insects. Different lights are used to attract the insects during night like nocturnal insects are attracted towards the light. So these traps are used for the collection of insects from the orchids or at the large scale. For example, bait is used in orchids like mega orchid, guava orchid at large scale. We cannot collect the insects from such orchids easily. So bait works on the large fields. There are variety of baits and variety of light traps that are used for the collection of insects in the large fields and orchids etc. Hence these are variety of insects that we have collected by using different collection methods. Now we will use these collection of insects for identification and taxonomic studies of insects.