Diseases of insects and other arthropods: results of diagnostic research over 55 years

Arthropods and especially insects are attacked by many arthropod-pathogenic organisms belonging to viruses, bacteria including rickettsiae, fungi, microsporidia, protists, and nematodes. They may cause lethal or chronic diseases. For 55 years, research on all kinds of arthropod diseases was conducted at the Institute for Biological Control, Darmstadt, formerly belonging to the Federal Biological Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA) that became part of the newly founded Julius Kuhn-Institute. Special attention is still being paid to diagnostics. During this period, about 1900 accessions comprising many thousands of dead or diseased specimens from 21 different arthropod orders were examined and the causative agents diagnosed. In the present paper, about 450 arthropod species, mainly insects, are listed together with the group and scientific name of the diagnosed arthropod pathogens and the origin (country) of the accession.