Spotlight on insects: trends, threats and conservation challenges

Didham, Raphaël K.; Collins, C. Matilda; Forister, Matthew L.; Hassall, Christopher; Leather, Simon R.; Packer, Laurence; Saunders, Manu E.; Stewart, Alan J. A.

doi:10.1111/icad.12409

Cited by 48 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…In the light of the dramatic biodiversity crisis, habitat provided by public and private urban green space has an increased importance in supporting populations of animal and plant species [ 23 ]. For example, urban green space could play an important role in mitigating insect declines [ 24 – 26 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ground-dwelling invertebrate diversity in domestic gardens along a rural-urban gradient: Landscape characteristics are more important than garden characteristics

et al. 2020

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Urbanisation is increasing worldwide and is regarded a major driver of environmental change altering local species assemblages. Private domestic gardens contribute a significant share of total green area in cities, but their biodiversity has received relatively little attention. Previous studies mainly considered plants, flying invertebrates such as bees and butterflies, and birds. By using a multi-taxa approach focused on less mobile, ground-dwelling invertebrates, we examined the influence of local garden characteristics and landscape characteristics on species richness and abundance of gastropods, spiders, millipedes, woodlice, ants, ground beetles and rove beetles. We assume that most of the species of these groups are able to complete their entire life cycle within a single garden. We conducted field surveys in thirty-five domestic gardens along a rural-urban gradient in Basel, Switzerland. Considered together, the gardens examined harboured an impressive species richness, with a mean share of species of the corresponding groups known for Switzerland of 13.9%, ranging from 4.7% in ground beetles to 23.3% in woodlice. The overall high biodiversity is a result of complementary contributions of gardens harbouring distinct species assemblages. Indeed, at the garden level, species richness of different taxonomical groups were typically not inter-correlated. The exception was ant species richness, which was correlated with those of gastropods and spiders. Generalised linear models revealed that distance to the city centre is an important driver of species richness, abundance and composition of several groups, resulting in an altered species composition in gardens in the centre of the city. Local garden characteristics were important drivers of gastropod and ant species richness, and the abundance of spiders, millipedes and rove beetles. Our study shows that domestic gardens make a valuable contribution to regional biodiversity. Thus, domestic urban gardens constitute an important part of green infrastructure, which should be considered by urban planners.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ground-dwelling invertebrate diversity in domestic gardens along a rural-urban gradient: Landscape characteristics are more important than garden characteristics

et al. 2020

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“…2020; Didham et al . 2020a). There has also been considerable scientific debate on this topic (Leather 2018; Cardoso et al .…”

Section: Figmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2020; Didham et al . 2020a), as well as on methods of data collection and analysis (Mupepele et al . 2019; Montgomery et al .…”

Section: Figmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2020; Wagner 2020; Didham et al . 2020a) documenting changes in insect populations over time have almost all been based on studies carried out in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in Europe and North America, where there has been considerable long‐term monitoring of insect abundance, richness, occupancy or biomass (e.g. Thomas et al .…”

Section: Figmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, the opportunities to investigate long‐term patterns of change for insects, whether it be biomass, richness, distribution or abundance, as a rigorous science, have perhaps never been greater given the emerging tools in technology and bioinformatics, increasing availability of historical data sets, novel methods of analysis and increased participation by citizen scientists (Didham et al . 2020a, 2020b).…”

Section: Figmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Population declines and the conservation of insects and other terrestrial invertebrates in Australia

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Unlocking the potential of historical abundance datasets to study biomass change in flying insects

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et al. 2020

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Trends in insect abundance are well established in some datasets, but far less is known about how abundance measures translate into biomass trends. Moths (Lepidoptera) provide particularly good opportunities to study trends and drivers of biomass change at large spatial and temporal scales, given the existence of long‐term abundance datasets. However, data on the body masses of moths are required for these analyses, but such data do not currently exist. To address this data gap, we collected empirical data in 2018 on the forewing length and dry mass of field‐sampled moths, and used these to train and test a statistical model that predicts the body mass of moth species from their forewing lengths (with refined parameters for Crambidae, Erebidae, Geometridae and Noctuidae). Modeled biomass was positively correlated, with high explanatory power, with measured biomass of moth species ( R 2 = 0.886 ± 0.0006, across 10,000 bootstrapped replicates) and of mixed‐species samples of moths ( R 2 = 0.873 ± 0.0003), showing that it is possible to predict biomass to an informative level of accuracy, and prediction error was smaller with larger sample sizes. Our model allows biomass to be estimated for historical moth abundance datasets, and so our approach will create opportunities to investigate trends and drivers of insect biomass change over long timescales and broad geographic regions.

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Spotlight on insects: trends, threats and conservation challenges

Cited by 48 publications

References 11 publications

Ground-dwelling invertebrate diversity in domestic gardens along a rural-urban gradient: Landscape characteristics are more important than garden characteristics

Ground-dwelling invertebrate diversity in domestic gardens along a rural-urban gradient: Landscape characteristics are more important than garden characteristics

Population declines and the conservation of insects and other terrestrial invertebrates in Australia

Unlocking the potential of historical abundance datasets to study biomass change in flying insects

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