Some Morphological Aspects of Insects
Some Insect Morphological Terms
Directions: The following digital flashcard activity highlights some common terminology used to describe and define various parts of an insect. A central role of the Digital Entomology Lab will be to introduce terminology and to show what the various parts of insects are and what these do.
A 44-Step "Dichotomous Key" for Insect Identification
A "key" enables an individual to identify what type of insect one has found. A visual of this 44-step dichotomous key follows. This is "dichotomous" because there is an either-or (binary) approach at each step. Ingesting insects into a digital repository based on this key would be a very work-intensive job, if this key is built into the Digital Entomology Lab dynamically. Further, the site would need sample images of each of the various types for this key to have coherence. From an entomology point-of-view, the dichotomous key may be elegant for "keying" unknown insects, but from a site design view, this would be prohibitively difficult to execute.
An Open-Source Insect Morphology Image
Terms may be combined with their equivalence in imagery for further learning. More information about Insect Morphology may be accessed through the link. A related image shows the finer details of various insect parts. The following image was created by Piotr Jaworski and made available as an open-source object through Wikimedia Commons on Apr. 15, 2008. Using quality open-source contents may help save some development time but still offer quality to learners. Universities have to balance their investments in projects (costs) to the potential return on investment (ROI) of going open-source. Many universities and colleges are very protectionist about their contents. To balance this tendency, many grant funders (particularly government-based ones) require the sharing of research findings with the general public to show the value of taxpayer investments in higher education. Finally, certified technical illustrators can depict fine details in image pullouts that would not be noticed without high-end microscopy and macro photography.
NEXT: Please go to the following page for some virtual participatory design questions. (Click "next page" below, or click the proper page number above.)
