Imperial College London
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Dr C M (Tilly) Collins

Faculty of Natural Sciences, Centre for Environmental Policy

Senior Teaching Fellow
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 9301t.collins Website

 
 
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Location

 

110aWeeks BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Didham:2020:10.1111/icad.12408,
author = {Didham, RK and Basset, Y and Collins, CM and Leather, SR and Littlewood, NA and Menz, MHM and Müller, J and Packer, L and Saunders, ME and Schönrogge, K and Stewart, AJA and Yanoviak, SP and Hassall, C},
doi = {10.1111/icad.12408},
journal = {Insect Conservation and Diversity},
pages = {103--114},
title = {Interpreting insect declines: seven challenges and a way forward},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/icad.12408},
volume = {13},
year = {2020}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Many insect species are under threat from the anthropogenic drivers of global change. There have been numerous welldocumented examples of insect population declines and extinctions in the scientific literature, but recent weaker studies making extreme claims of a global crisis have drawn widespread media coverage and brought unprecedented public attention. This spotlight might be a doubleedged sword if the veracity of alarmist insect decline statements do not stand up to close scrutiny.We identify seven key challenges in drawing robust inference about insect population declines: establishment of the historical baseline, representativeness of site selection, robustness of time series trend estimation, mitigation of detection bias effects, and ability to account for potential artefacts of density dependence, phenological shifts and scaledependence in extrapolation from sample abundance to populationlevel inference.Insect population fluctuations are complex. Greater care is needed when evaluating evidence for population trends and in identifying drivers of those trends. We present guidelines for bestpractise approaches that avoid methodological errors, mitigate potential biases and produce more robust analyses of time series trends.Despite many existing challenges and pitfalls, we present a forwardlooking prospectus for the future of insect population monitoring, highlighting opportunities for more creative exploitation of existing baseline data, technological advances in sampling and novel computational approaches. Entomologists cannot tackle these challenges alone, and it is only through collaboration with citizen scientists, other research scientists in many disciplines, and data analysts that the next generation of researchers will bridge the gap between little bugs and big data.
AU  - Didham,RK
AU  - Basset,Y
AU  - Collins,CM
AU  - Leather,SR
AU  - Littlewood,NA
AU  - Menz,MHM
AU  - Müller,J
AU  - Packer,L
AU  - Saunders,ME
AU  - Schönrogge,K
AU  - Stewart,AJA
AU  - Yanoviak,SP
AU  - Hassall,C
DO  - 10.1111/icad.12408
EP  - 114
PY  - 2020///
SN  - 1752-458X
SP  - 103
TI  - Interpreting insect declines: seven challenges and a way forward
T2  - Insect Conservation and Diversity
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/icad.12408
UR  - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/icad.12408
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/78162
VL  - 13
ER  -
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