The exhibition "The Insect Entomophages" is represented by 82 different types of useful insects from 11 orders, 36 families. Comparing the collected material to the data on the biology of entomophages, one can judge about the species that can be used against certain pests. The biological method of pest control – now the most advanced in the direction of Entomology, as some of the chemicals with which we fight against pests, poison the soil, plants and penetrate with the products of agriculture in the human body, causing unnoticed damage to the health.

Predatory insects Entomophages

Parasites of plant pests

 
The activity of entomophages keeps and maintains the balance of nature. We know, for example, that to control the Colorado potato beetle it is enough to have 3-4 lattice ground beetles Carabus canellatus Ill. per 1m ², to prevent mass reproduction of 2nd generation beetle.

Carabus canellatus

Among entomophages there are small (9-11 mm) original species – voracious predators such as tick-seeds Rhaphidia ophiopsis L., representatives of a very ancient group of insects. They hunt at various slow moving insects – aphids, caterpillars and larvae of tick-seeds, penetrating the bark beetle moves, destroy them, sanitising the forest.

Rhaphidia ophiopsis

The collection of the museum has an amazing and rare flightless predatory grasshopper, body length is 53-75 mm, it is called Dybok steppe Saga pedo Pall. It is reproducted parthenogenetically, that is, without fertilization, so no chirps. Dybok driils ovipositor in the ground and lays 7 unfertilized eggs at different depths, which develop only females. It hunts as a ambush predator, its habits resemble a praying mantis: it spents hours sitting in the grass waiting for its victims. It eats not only the small grasshoppers, but also large grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, bugs. Dybok is a typical representative of the steppe fauna of northern Kazakhstan. Declining in number form, it is very rare as a result of agricultural use of land and is in the Red Book of Kazakhstan.

Saga pedo