ABSTRACT
Diet development is a process of invention. When we set out to develop a diet for an insect that has not been reared previously on articial diet, we are immersing ourselves in a new realm, and it would be helpful to have a set of rules that would assure us of success. It would be convenient to have a set of rules such as Koch’s postulates in microbiology where the causality of a disease is determined for a putative microbial species. Such a set of “rules” can be considered an algorithm where a logical set of steps are taken in a certain order (study feeding dynamics → analyze natural food → develop model of diet components → test components (bioassay) → return to model in incremental steps of optimization). Unfortunately, no such rules exist nor do tested and validated algorithms exist, though several researchers have tried to develop such a model (e.g., Cohen 1992). Therefore, the process of diet development remains in a fairly chaotic state where we depend on chance more than established, vetted principles.
