Insect Diversity and Conservation

The course is given as a distance course with an introductory, mandatory one-week field course in Uppsala the week before the start of the regular semester. The course ends with two days of attendance at seminars and the exam at the end of the semester in January. The goal of the course is to give the participants useful knowledge for practical work with insects in a nature conservation context. The course links theory about insect diversity, conservation and ecology with practical field knowledge of insects and their habitats, inventory methodology, species identification and report writing. The course includes collecting insects in the field, project work, assignments and seminars. The field visits are devoted to insects, their habitats and methods for studying them. The assignments and seminars deal with issues related to insect diversity and conservation, e.g. red listing, insect ecology and ecosystem services. A significant part of the course consists of a self-selected inventory project where you get to practice planning the project, determining collected insects, analyzing the results and writing a report.