The mealworm (Tenebrio molitor) is a beetle whose dried larvae, recently approved as food by the European Food Safety Authority, compare nutritionally to beef and poultry – with a significantly reduced ecological footprint.
However, farms that raise these insects are vulnerable.
An outbreak of densovirus – a DNA virus infecting invertebrates – has been reported with a high mortality rate: livestock are being decimated due to infectious diseases. And there is no support for these breeders in terms of biosecurity advice, due to a lack of diagnostic tools.
“Without a precise description of the normal anatomy of the insect which would allow us to know what healthy organs look like, it is impossible to determine whether what we observe under the magnifying glass is normal or the sign of a disease,” indicates Marie-Odile Benoit-Biancamano, veterinary pathologist at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Montreal.
It is this void that she and her colleagues Chloé Rosa-Teijeiro and Fanny Renois wanted to fill by establishing, for the first time, a dissection protocol for the adult mealworm. The results of this work were recently published in theJournal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation.