ANTENNA contributes to a paper on understanding insect declines

PhD Ignasi Bartomeus, an ANTENNA scientist from the Doñana Biological Station EBD-CSIC, Spain, collaborated with a research team on a new paper published on ScienceDirect. The paper draws attention to the obstacles to assessing the status and trends of insect populations and to the challenges and disconnects from conservation actions.

The paper notes that correlation-based studies show concerning declines in insect populations, but the complex nature of insect population dynamics and the lack of long-term data make it difficult to assess these trends. The authors argue that studying life-history dynamics – how reproduction, survival, and other vital rates respond to environmental change throughout an organism's life cycle – can help explain the mechanisms behind population changes and improve predictions of declines. However, research on life-history dynamics has mainly focused on mammals, birds, and economically or culturally important invertebrates, limiting predictions and conservation efforts for many other species.

The paper reviews methods for assessing life-history dynamics using heterogeneous data and emphasises that insects and other invertebrates have unique ecological and evolutionary characteristics that require dedicated models. Developing such models could improve both life-history theory and its applications in conservation.

Invertebrates are viewed as key players in ecosystem functioning despite often being neglected in biodiversity conservation actions. Reversing invertebrate declines requires simultaneously gaining mechanistic understanding and predictive power to guide conservation efforts, and life histories might catalyse this change.

The paper comes at a time of growing concern about insect population declines and offers an important perspective on possible actions. 

Read the full article here.