ENTOMOPHTHORALES G. Winter
(an order of entomophagous fungi)

Infected insects die during summer and autumn in conspicuous positions: on plant stems and even windows. They can be found on the undersides of smooth leaves on trees where good numbers can be easily found, or, more traditionally, by searching on damp rocks etc, eg beside water.

Slide preps from small samples of the infection often fail to show the ripe sporangia necessary for identification - they are surprisingly efficiently ejected - but they can sometimes be sampled from hairs on the insect or even the substrate. With fresh specimens, adding a small leaf to maintain humidity and leaving overnight in a tube or covered on a slide may reward you with a halo of sporangia the following morning.

The sporangia stain well in lactophenol cotton blue.