How Many Edible Insect Species Are There? A Not So Simple Question

Abstract

Insects used as food and medicine are receiving increased attention. There is a need to scrutinise recent estimates of which and how many insect species are used as we have noticed inappropriate assessments and overestimations. We review the contemporary list of edible insects of the world published online by Wageningen University and compiled by Ijde Jongema since it is widely used in the literature. Each of the 2403 entries were scrutinised, including checking name validity, verifying insect usage in cited references, and categorising each entry. Our revision indicates inappropriate assessments and inclusions such as spiders (not insects) and insect products (e.g., honeydew) when the insect itself is not used. With relevant and accepted definitions, we provide a critical assessment and estimate of the number of food insects (1611) and medicinal insects (81), which is lower than Wageningen University and Jongema’s estimate of 2111 “edible insects”. We acknowledge that our critical assessment may also be an overestimate or an underestimate and deserves further scrutiny, and we encourage a more practical use of a database of food and medicinal insects with our suggestion for a querying online curated database. We conclude that making accurate estimates is a difficult feat but that inappropriate assessments can and need to be avoided.