Research project The Insect Biome Atlas

The Insect Biome Atlas (IBA) is a large-scale insect collection project taking place in Sweden and Madagascar. The main aim of the project is to describe in detail the insect faunas of these two biologically and geologically very different countries. Insects were collected using Malaise traps: 200 malaise traps in Sweden and 50 in Madagascar. In Sweden, the traps were managed by over 100 volunteers, which makes this project one of the largest citizen science projects to take place in Scandinavia. Several other types of samples and ecological measurements were collected at the trap sites to gather a full understanding of the ecological roles of the organisms that comprise the insect biome in these countries. The identification of all insects and the organisms they interact with, such as pathogens as well as symbiotic fungi and bacteria, will be achieved using non-destructive massive parallel sequencing. The project is a collaboration between Fredrik Ronquist (The Swedish Museum of Natural History), Ayco Tack (Stockholm University), Tomas Roslin (Swedish Agricultural University) and Anders Andersson (KTH/SciLifeLab). The project is funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

The project started 2018 and will go on until retirement.