Poultry, Aquaculture, & Reptiles Ask - Got Milk? Insect Milk that is!

Great studies keep rolling in! Nice job by colleagues and friends in USA (Mark Finke) and abroad (Dennis Oonincx & Guido Bosch)!


Oonincx, D. G. A. B., P. van Keulen, M. D. Finke, F. M. Baines, M. Vermeulen, and G. Bosch. 2018. Evidence of vitamin D synthesis in insects exposed to UVb light. Scientific Reports 8: 10807.

Cool study examining the ability of insects to produce vitamin D (hence my reference to "got milk"- apologies, my humor can be a bit dry. :) While I jest, I would like to seriously point out this ability could be important for generating designer insects with specific uses. Increasing vitamins or other nutrients through dietary or environmental manipulation could result in novel insect proteins or other subcomponents that could prove valuable to the livestock, poultry, aquaculture, and reptile industries.

Summary:
From this study with house cricket, mealworm, migratory locus, and BSF is that the first three can synthesize vitamin D3 (as stated in the conclusion). If I am not mistaken, the discussion also suggests BSF can synthesize D2 (different than results (D3) other species tested). 

I highly recommend this article as they provide a great discussion on vitamin D and its relevance to vertebrate health.

Author

Jeffery K. Tomberlin, PhD
Director, EVO Conversion Systems
Twitter: @FliesFacility