Insects.org
Insects.org is a charming website designed, researched and produced by Dexter Sear atI/0 Vision from Hawaii. “This site aims to help you really see insects for the miniature marvels they represent and to understand how intertwined our cultures have become with these alien creatures.” The site is divided into 4 areas. The Entophiles area contains 14 orders of insects with 150 photographs of insects from California, Brazil, Ecuador, Indonesia and Hawaii. The CEDigest area stands for Cultural Entomology and it explians how “insects play a major role in almost every aspect of human culture.” The third area class,insectica, is a work in progress that will contain educational resources to bring bugs into the classroom. It currently features a chapter on butterfly and moth wings. Lastly, Entolinks are catagorized and reviewed links to other websites and resources related to insects.
Insects.org is a growing database of images and information about some really cool insects. Images are sharp and the short descriptions include not only the usual information about habitat and behavior, but also references to the insect’s role in world cultures including symbolic significance and literary references where applicable. The Entophiles Device, a navigation tool for this reference section built right in to the browser, provides access to the images and information about the insects by order grouping. Students select the order of insect first using the graphics to guide them, then click on a thumbnail image to access the full record. The site is easily navigated using the arrows and buttons on the Entophiles Device, with added features including Photographic Enlargement and Random Leap navigation. For even easier access, the site offers a simple list of all the records on the Entophiles pages.Class: Insecta, the thematic “classroom” section of the site, currently houses just one module. This module focuses on the patterns and designs of butterfly and moth wings. Butterfly wings are covered with many individually colored scales that together form the distinctive pattern designs and colors of each species. In this section, the colors and patterns of six species are examined and explained.More Cultural Entomology connections are made in articles available in the Cultural Entomology Digest area, which includes references to insects in art, literature, and history. This website is appropriate for middle and high school life science, art and history students.
