Projects
EDINCO 2: Microbiological and chemical food safety risks in the breeding of insects Ghent University
Objectives
1) What is the relation between the rearing conditions and the microbial and chemical safety of the insects?
2) Which substrates can be used for safe, large-scale insect growing and what are the requirements that have to be met?
3) What are good practices for the rearer to produce a safe supply of insects?
Development of an insect attracting feeding device to improve the biological control of insect pests in greenhouses KU Leuven
Biological control using natural enemies such as arthropod predators and parasitoids has become an important alternative way of pest management. However, the efficacy of biological pest control can be seriously hampered when naturally occurring enemies are not sufficiently abundant or effective. Therefore, naturally occurring beneficial insects are often complemented with the release of commercially-reared natural enemies. Despite these ...
Symbiont Diversity and Feeding Strategies in Insect Agricultural Pests Ghent University
Insects are extremely versatile in exploiting a large range of nutritional niches. This is not so much the result of their metabolic
flexibility but heavily depends on intimate relationships between insects and associated endosymbionts. Gut bacterial assemblages
play a fundamental role in making the plant tissue edible for the insect and promote adaptation between phytophagous insects and
host plants. This project focuses on ...
The evolution of caste plasticity and caste dimorphism in insect societies KU Leuven
Social insects are a key model in the study of sociality and a prime example of “major transitions in evolution”, where previously independently breeding individuals teamed up and went on to live in highly advanced societies. Insect societies are characterized by a reproductive division of labour in which queens specialise in breeding and workers engage mostly in non-reproductive tasks. For comparative studies, Hymenopteran insects are an ...
Agricultural Insect Cluster Thomas More Kempen
Research question: How should the different links work together to achieve an economically viable, demand-driven production and processing of black soldier fly larvae?
...
Agricultural Insect Cluster Thomas More
Introsect: the introduction of insect rearing as an agricultural activity in the primary sector Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Rearing insects is considered a new, challenging agricultural activity. But what is possible on an existing farm? Which insect thrives best in an existing space? What adjustments are needed and what difficulties are experienced with this type of husbandry? In this "Introsect" VLAIO-LA traject, partners Inagro, ILVO, VIVES, KULeuven / Thomas More and the National Experimental Gardens for ...
The evolution of caste plasticity and caste dimorphism in insect societies. KU Leuven
The evolution of sociality in ants, bees and wasps is a prime example of a major transition in evolution, where individuals went to live in societies characterised by the presence of an advanced reproductive division of labour. In primitively eusocial species, the allocation to reproductive and nonreproductive roles in the colony is highly plastic, while in more advanced eusocial species, the queen and worker castes are morphologically ...
Genomic tools for breeding against heritable diseases in horses. KU Leuven
The project will use reliable state-of-the-art genomic technologies for the rapid identification of genetic markers for heritable diseases in horses, which will facilitate effective genomics based selection against disease susceptibility. The diseases of particular focus for this project are osteochondrosis (OC), insect bite hypersensitivity (IBH) and chronic progressive lymphedema (CPL). The occurrence of these diseases is a significant ...