Insect biodiversity change is an important research focus for our Agroecology Group. Widespread declines in insect biodiversity have been attributed to a diverse set of anthropogenic drivers, but the relative importance of these drivers remains a puzzle. One aspect of the group's research, as part of the GLITRS project, has focussed on combining multiple forms of evidence to enable more robust predictions of insect biodiversity change.
A paper published today in Diversity and Distributions, authored by members of the group including Dr Joe Millard (first author), Dr Andrew Bladon, and Professor Lynn Dicks, and co-led by Prof Andy Purvis (senior author) at the Natural History Museum in London, introduces another core piece of the puzzle in the form of meta-analytic effect sizes. It builds on the project's previous work proposing a model for integrating data sources to predict relationships, rather than waiting for more time series to accumulate.
The new meta-analytic puzzle piece presented today is deliberately built so the model can continue to grow in the future, and slot in beside three other puzzle pieces (the PREDICTS database of spatial comparisons i.e. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2579; expert opinions, collated by Andrew Bladon and Lynn Dicks; and time series, collated by colleagues at UK CEH). The meta-analytic database has represented a highly collaborative joint effort between the University of Cambridge, the Natural History Museum in London, University College London, UKCEH, Queen Mary, Stellenbosch University, the Zoological Society of London, and the University of Reading.
Once the project has all four pieces of the puzzle, they will be able to implement a model that combines all these evidence types to make predictions on insect biodiversity change. Not only that, but they will have a joined up system to which they can continue adding data into the future, potentially helping to inform projects such as Conservation Evidence and their work predicting change for other taxonomic groups.
Read the paper: Millard, J., Skinner, G., Bladon, A.J., Cooke, R., Outhwaite, C.L., Rodger, J.G., Barnes, L.A., Isip, J.E., Keum, J., Raw, C., Wenban-Smith, E., Dicks, L.V., Hui, C., Jones, J.I., Woodcock, B., Isaac, N.J.B. and Purvis, A. (2025), A Multithreat Meta-Analytic Database for Understanding Insect Biodiversity Change. Divers Distrib, 31: e70025. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.70025
Image: Closeup of a bee in a yellow flower. Photo by Andrew Bladon