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I don't do Entomology yet I'm going to attempt to put a test together for my school's team. Can someone here PM me general guidelines for making tests that are demonically hard?

This past Saturday we were at our state competition. On the ento test it asked us to identify families that were not on the list. I consulted the judges and they said if an order is on the list, then automatically all families under it are on the list as well. If someone could clear this doubt for me that would be great. Thanks!

If it was an order like Protura, where no specific families are named, then I think you should know the most basic/most common family of those orders. Like Mantidae for Mantodea, etc. I think even if you don't, you should have enough time to quickly flip through your guide to find the family name. But if it's an order like say, Odonata, and they ask for Calopterygidae or whatever, that shouldn't be allowed. The rules(my edition at least, I happen to have two copies that are both a little different) specify that insects are limited to those listed on the Official Insect List, but I don't think you should rule out the first situation I mentioned.

Also, make sure you have your questions and your checking of which family they belong to based on the Audubon and not any other guide. I remember at my invitational there was a Jerusalem cricket, which according to my NWF was in the family Stenopelmatidae but according to Audubon was in Gryllacrididae. I didn't know this at the time, and I knew they couldn't have made us an answer with a non list insect, so I guessed and put Gryllotalpidae, which of course, ended up being wrong.

ceg7654 wrote:If it was an order like Protura, where no specific families are named, then I think you should know the most basic/most common family of those orders. Like Mantidae for Mantodea, etc. I think even if you don't, you should have enough time to quickly flip through your guide to find the family name. But if it's an order like say, Odonata, and they ask for Calopterygidae or whatever, that shouldn't be allowed. The rules(my edition at least, I happen to have two copies that are both a little different) specify that insects are limited to those listed on the Official Insect List, but I don't think you should rule out the first situation I mentioned.

Also, make sure you have your questions and your checking of which family they belong to based on the Audubon and not any other guide. I remember at my invitational there was a Jerusalem cricket, which according to my NWF was in the family Stenopelmatidae but according to Audubon was in Gryllacrididae. I didn't know this at the time, and I knew they couldn't have made us an answer with a non list insect, so I guessed and put Gryllotalpidae, which of course, ended up being wrong.

If they don't ask for the families on the list, then they can't ask about them on the test.

They might ask questions about certain families or something, but you are not expected to identify those families. The first situation you mentioned is absolutely against the rules, it is ridiculous to ask you to identify Mantidae when the list only goes down to order for that group of insects.

Sometimes you get bad event writers that misinterpret the rules, and unfortunately, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. When I did Herpetology, the state event asked us to identify a sea turtle species, but the list didn't go down to species. Highly unfair question that we couldn't answer, but there wasn't much we could do about it. But yeah, it's totally against the rules to ask identification for groups that are not on the list.

gneissisnice wrote:

ceg7654 wrote:If it was an order like Protura, where no specific families are named, then I think you should know the most basic/most common family of those orders. Like Mantidae for Mantodea, etc. I think even if you don't, you should have enough time to quickly flip through your guide to find the family name. But if it's an order like say, Odonata, and they ask for Calopterygidae or whatever, that shouldn't be allowed. The rules(my edition at least, I happen to have two copies that are both a little different) specify that insects are limited to those listed on the Official Insect List, but I don't think you should rule out the first situation I mentioned.

Also, make sure you have your questions and your checking of which family they belong to based on the Audubon and not any other guide. I remember at my invitational there was a Jerusalem cricket, which according to my NWF was in the family Stenopelmatidae but according to Audubon was in Gryllacrididae. I didn't know this at the time, and I knew they couldn't have made us an answer with a non list insect, so I guessed and put Gryllotalpidae, which of course, ended up being wrong.

If they don't ask for the families on the list, then they can't ask about them on the test.

They might ask questions about certain families or something, but you are not expected to identify those families. The first situation you mentioned is absolutely against the rules, it is ridiculous to ask you to identify Mantidae when the list only goes down to order for that group of insects.

Sometimes you get bad event writers that misinterpret the rules, and unfortunately, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. When I did Herpetology, the state event asked us to identify a sea turtle species, but the list didn't go down to species. Highly unfair question that we couldn't answer, but there wasn't much we could do about it. But yeah, it's totally against the rules to ask identification for groups that are not on the list.

Mantidea for mantidea is very easy because it is the only family listed under it in the Audubon, however I was asked about: families for Isoptera, Grylloblattodea, and Protura. I use the Audubon as my book since the list is based on it, and I find easy to use. In the Audubon it listed NO families under Protura. It would be understandable if they at least chose a family from the book(it would just be a misinterpretation of the rules),because I wouldn't have had such a hard time. Is this against the rules?

wwmsscioly wrote:

gneissisnice wrote:

ceg7654 wrote:If it was an order like Protura, where no specific families are named, then I think you should know the most basic/most common family of those orders. Like Mantidae for Mantodea, etc. I think even if you don't, you should have enough time to quickly flip through your guide to find the family name. But if it's an order like say, Odonata, and they ask for Calopterygidae or whatever, that shouldn't be allowed. The rules(my edition at least, I happen to have two copies that are both a little different) specify that insects are limited to those listed on the Official Insect List, but I don't think you should rule out the first situation I mentioned.

Also, make sure you have your questions and your checking of which family they belong to based on the Audubon and not any other guide. I remember at my invitational there was a Jerusalem cricket, which according to my NWF was in the family Stenopelmatidae but according to Audubon was in Gryllacrididae. I didn't know this at the time, and I knew they couldn't have made us an answer with a non list insect, so I guessed and put Gryllotalpidae, which of course, ended up being wrong.

If they don't ask for the families on the list, then they can't ask about them on the test.

They might ask questions about certain families or something, but you are not expected to identify those families. The first situation you mentioned is absolutely against the rules, it is ridiculous to ask you to identify Mantidae when the list only goes down to order for that group of insects.

Sometimes you get bad event writers that misinterpret the rules, and unfortunately, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. When I did Herpetology, the state event asked us to identify a sea turtle species, but the list didn't go down to species. Highly unfair question that we couldn't answer, but there wasn't much we could do about it. But yeah, it's totally against the rules to ask identification for groups that are not on the list.

Mantidea for mantidea is very easy because it is the only family listed under it in the Audubon, however I was asked about: families for Isoptera, Grylloblattodea, and Protura. I use the Audubon as my book since the list is based on it, and I find easy to use. In the Audubon it listed NO families under Protura. It would be understandable if they at least chose a family from the book(it would just be a misinterpretation of the rules),because I wouldn't have had such a hard time. Is this against the rules?

Oh... Yeah, those orders shouldn't be asked about honestly. But I guess in a way it's unfairly fair because no other team would've thought of preparing for those families too. Unless of course they had everything else perfectly memorized and just thought, "Hey, let's study some families for the order-only orders for fun!"
So it's most likely that everyone just got those questions wrong. The test writers shouldn't be allowed to give questions like that, but they did... It should still be fair though because like I said, everyone should've gotten those wrong.

Question: Just read on my State rules clarifications that they'll be using the proper spellings because there's a typo on the Official Insect List, apparently Lamphyridae is supposed to be Lampyridae... I wasn't sure what was supposed to be right since Lamphyridae was on the Official List AND Lamphyridae(yes, WITH the 'h') is correct for firefly pictures on the Question Quiz... So I guess Lampyridae is correct now? How harshly is incorrect spelling graded? And why is the incorrect version correct on the Question Quiz?

Anyone here had states?
What was the test like?

Another question...
Anyone have any good diagrams they use on your notes?
I am in the pre-competition cramming stage

SOnerd wrote:Another question...
Anyone have any good diagrams they use on your notes?
I am in the pre-competition cramming stage

Same here Mine is on Saturday and I hope I know enough.

Which guide do you use? The NWF one has a lot of really useful diagrams(they have some general ones in the front, then they have one for each order ), so I don't put any on my cheat sheet. If you have Audubon, then you should get diagrams similar to the NWF one. At my Regionals we had four fill in the diagram questions that I completed using my guide, because I didn't really study anatomy.

I think you should have one of the frontal view of the head, one for the insect integument, one for antennae, one for wings, and anything else you think you need. All those I just mentioned can be found in the NWF though.

Hope this helped!