NEW PAPER! And what a challenging one. It has taught us a lot about how we can understand the impacts of pressures on insects, and I hope we can continue to add to it into the future. Another great output from the @glitrs.bsky.social GLiTRS project team 🌍 🐝 🐜 🦋 🐞
And there's a great opportunity to get involved in this project at the @entsocamerica.bsky.social conference in Portland, Oregon in the symposium on Evidence Synthesis 🧾🐝🦋🦗
A huge amount of work by Joe and others 👏 went into building the infrastructure behind the database. Including 'Dynameta', a platform for ingesting the effect sizes and a meta-protocol to coordinate the many different meta-analyses.
New GLiTRS paper led by @joemillard.bsky.social 🚨📝
"Our database provides a framework for the first global meta-analytic overview of the response of insects to a range of major anthropogenic drivers"
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
✨Bumble bee probability of occurrence responds to interactions between local and landscape land use, climatic niche properties and climate change🐝New paper out, led by @tnewbold31.bsky.social, & with @jetkerr.bsky.social & Peter Soroye (the result of some fantastic trips across the Atlantic 🇨🇦) 🌎 🧪 🌐
Grizzled Skipper (Pyrgus malvae) had its worst year on record in the UK in 2024. It numbers at @ukbms.bsky.social monitored sites have been below average now in 20 of the last 25 years. Since 1976, its population has decreased by 49% (📷Mark Searle)
How do we increase nature literacy among society? Some thoughts from @waspwoman.bsky.social
theconversation.com/heres-how-to...
Clockwise from top left: Tenthredo sawfly, mantid, cockroaches, dragonfly
NEWS: Despite fears about insect declines, we know very little about 99% of species globally 🌍📉.
Scientists are proposing a new approach to get a more complete picture of insect populations and analyse how they are responding to threats.
Read more: www.ceh.ac.uk/press/some-i... 🧪
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@qmulsbbs.bsky.social, @exeter.ac.uk, @camzoology.bsky.social
@andypurvisnhm.bsky.social, @ukladybirds.bsky.social, Ben Woodcock, and @drnickisaac.bsky.social
@ukceh.bsky.social, @uclcber.bsky.social, @zslscience.bsky.social, @zslofficial.bsky.social, @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social, @nhm.org, @qmulrivercomms.bsky.social, @qmulse.bsky.social
Huge effort from lots of GLiTRS researchers: @r-cooke.bsky.social, @charlieouthwaite.bsky.social, Andrew Bladon, @joemillard.bsky.social, @james-rodger-za.bsky.social, Zhaoke Dong, Ellie Dyer, Siobhan Edney, John Murphy, Lynn Dicks, Cang Hui, Iwan Jones, @tnewbold31.bsky.social
Diagram showing how multiple evidence types feed into a synoptic overview of insect biodiversity change, facilitating projections across space and time, policy recommendations and evidence-based conservation action
The GLiTRS team are working to implement this approach to provide an updated overview of the state of the world's insects and how they respond to a range of human-driven threats - so watch this space for more!
🔗https://glitrs.ceh.ac.uk/
(6/7)
A diagram showing the integration of multiple evidence types into threat response models and projections of insect biodiversity change
By combining space-for-time analysis, experiments, expert elicitation and time series we can better inform assessments of insect responses to threats (5/7)
Graph showing the power of attribution versus the temporal, spatial and taxonomic coverage of different evidence types
In this review, we propose a way forward that brings together evidence types and integrates these into one model to take advantage of the strengths of each whilst balancing out their weaknesses (4/7)
Collection of different insects
Ideally, we would systematically monitor insects everywhere, however, due to their sheer diversity and the fact that most have not even been named, this is just not feasible.
Rather than wait for long-term data, we must gather all information together to understand the status of insects (3/7)
Insects are incredibly important; they provide a range of services that us humans would find it pretty hard to live without. Yet they are in decline across many regions of the world 📉🌍 and it is unclear what is causing this at the global scale (2/7)
NEW PAPER from the GLiTRS team! 🎉
We review how best to use different types of evidence to better understand global insect declines 🦗🪳🪲🦋🐛🐜
"Integrating multiple evidence streams to understand insect biodiversity change" published in @science.org
🔗 tinyurl.com/mr35bdaa
A summary 🧵 below (1/7)
Great to be at the #FutureforButterflies. Tomorrow I will speak about this new paper and our work with #biodiversitymonitoring using #Insect #cameratraps and #AI as part of @mambo-project.eu @onestop-project.eu and @insectai.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...?
Screenshot from the cover page of the paper
A map of the world showing fly migration study locations and estimated routes
A close up photo of Eristalinus taeniops the stripey eyed hoverfly on a yellow flower in Cyprus
A close up photo of the locust blowfly Stomorhina lunata on a rock. My favourite fly
It's published!
The largest research work I've ever undertaken:
Lords of the flies: dipteran migrants are diverse, abundant & ecologically important
Published in Biological Reviews: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Thanks so much to co-authors @koralwotton.bsky.social & Myles Menz
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Orange-tip butterfly on flower
Bumblebee on flower
Infographic with weather conditions for carrying out Flower Insect Timed Counts (FIT Counts)
😎 It's 1 April and that can only mean one thing... yes, insect survey season is back in earnest!
🐝🪰 Check out @pomscheme.bsky.social to help monitor #pollinator abundance with 10-minute Flower-Insect Timed Counts
🦋 And see @ukbms.bsky.social for getting involved with #butterfly transects
The recording of the @savebutterflies.bsky.social 2025 UK Moth Recorders' Meeting is available to watch here: bit.ly/43315yr
Our new paper thinking about bias in population monitoring using @ukbms.bsky.social data 🌍🦋
