Breeding endangered beetles - An EPS@ISEP 2024 Project

Habitat loss, climate change, and pesticide use are key threats affecting beetle populations. This paper describes Scarabreed, a project that contributes to mitigate the beetle decline crisis. It was carried out by a team of six European students from different engineering fields and nationalities within the European Project Semester (EPS) at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), a project-based and teamwork learning framework. The designed solution -- the Beetle Breeder Version 2 (BBV2) -- consists of a smart modular vivarium created especially for beetle breeding. It monitors and controls relevant habitat parameters and offers two user-friendly interfaces (on-device and a Web application). The innovative modular structure of the vivarium allows easy scaling, customisation, and transportation. As a whole, the project offers significant environmental benefits: (i) facilitates the captive breeding of endangered beetle species, promoting population restoration efforts; (ii) fosters, as an educational tool, youth and general public awareness about the crucial role beetles play in ecosystems; and (iii) adopts eco-efficient and responsible business practices by following ethics and sustainability driven design and marketing.

Keywords

Engineering education European Project Semester Beetle modular vivarium Smart monitoring Sustainability

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/29906

Citation

Cedric Florus, Jennifer Lattunen, Julius Knäuper, Krzysztof Jugiel, Marion Silva, Thomas Dekkers, Abel J. Duarte, Benedita Malheiro, Cristina Ribeiro, Jorge Justo, Manuel Silva, Paulo Ferreira & Pedro Guedes (2025). "Breeding Endangered Beetles – An EPS@ISEP 2024 Project", Futureproofing Engineering Education for Global Responsibility – Volume 3. ICL 2024. Ed. Michael E. Auer, Tiia Rüütmann, Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, Vol. 1280, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, ISBN 978-3-031-83522-3, 352-362. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-83523-0_33.