Insect Conservation for the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Insects have been immensely successful as an animal group. They dominate composi- tional diversity of all but the saltiest and coldest parts of the planet. Yet today insects are declining at a precipitous rate. This is of great concern in terms of impoverishment of Earth, and is also dire for us. Insects contribute to the maintenance of terrestrial and freshwater systems, their service delivery and their resilience. The meteoric impact of humans is challenging this dominance, yet so few people realize that the very fabric of life on which they depend is being unraveled at an alarming rate. Action is required, as are new perspectives, if we are to maintain insect diversity and services through the twenty-first century. Here, we review how we should view and act to have more effective insect diver - sity conservation based on six themes: (1) philosophy (establishing the ethical founda-tion), (2) research (the finding out), (3) policy (the framework for action), (4) psychology (understanding how to engage humans in insect conservation action), (5) practice (imple-mentation of action), and (6) validation (establishing how well we are doing at conserving insects). We then overview some emergent challenges and solutions at both the species and landscape operational levels in agricultural, forestry, and urban environments. list gives important coverage to level, are important too. National Biodiversity Strategy Action Plans (NBSAPs) are also significant for local insect conservation, especially in biodiversity hotspots. NBSAPs cover a wide range of biodiversity issues and targets besides insect species conservation. As regards services supplied by insects, these may be described under the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA). It provides a framework to include provisioning, regulating and cultural services. An important service currently being supplied by insects is entomophagy, the human consumption of insects, which is becoming increasingly mainstream globally. is biophobia (a), which is intrinsic to us. Yet when we overcome this fear factor, we culturally develop biophilia, especially when we see the beauty of nature, including insects, in our parks and gardens. Besides biophobia, the fear factor today has a second component, a concern that there is a loss of essential services (b), particularly pollination. Our reaction to this service loss, alongside biophilia for certain species, is feeding back into insect conservation, which, in turn, improves our sense of wellbeing.