Welcome to What's Eating Your Collection? This website and the earlier version on CD grew out of the insect pest courses of the same name offered initially through Renaissance West Midlands RAW (Renaissance at Work) courses. David Pinniger and I had many conversations about the number of people who were not able to attend IPM courses and those trying to carry out Integrated Pest Management (IPM) with no technical, scientific or practical support.
This is now the second iteration of the website and we are delighted that it has proved to be of help to so many since it was first created in 2011.
Whilst not a subsitute for training, it is the next best thing.
- It will guide you through the identification process to help you to determine what you have found.
- It contains a decision making tool to help you to decide what to do about it.
- It contains fact sheets to give you more information about the main insect pest species and sheets to explain how to carry out certain tasks and to give you further advice about related topics.
- It contains links to further sources of information, resources and help.
You can be guided by the website or you can short cut the process and go straight to the information you want. I hope that it will become a trusted and well used resource and an invaluable part of your IPM regime.
Identify and Solve is the section where you will find information about insect pests, treatments, pest management options and guidelines. You can interrogate the site to give you customised information and a cut through museum will show you where you might encounter problems.
Pest recording is where insect pest finds are recorded and this can be searched to show how many of what species are present in what type of museum where. This is the first time that national insect pest data has been collected. It is not yet known what this will show but it will undoubtedly be interesting.
If you are interested in adding your insect catch data to the website, please click
"register" in the Pest Recording section and complete the form.
If you have any comments or suggestions regarding this website then please contact me at
Jane.TW@birminghammuseums.org.uk
Jane Thompson Webb
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
June 2011