Developing a robust approach to the monitoring and analysis of insect populations: trends in fly numbers in Québec and implications for insectivores

NERC：凯瑟琳·鲍威尔：NE/ s007261 /1昆虫支撑着地球上几乎所有的生态系统。它们通过调节环境和提供资源，为人类和其他物种提供无数的服务。昆虫等优势物种的丰度和生物量下降被认为对生态系统健康的损害尤其严重，因为它们在生态系统功能中发挥着不成比例的巨大作用。当地的研究已经发现昆虫数量正在下降的证据。然而，由于数据不足和偏见，对于全球昆虫数量下降的程度，以及农业集约化等驱动因素对长期下降的贡献，尚未形成统一的共识。其中一些数据不足的存在是由于昆虫取样和分析方案的根本问题，例如使用不适当的时间和/或空间分辨率来分析长期趋势，以及不同的取样努力。考虑到评估昆虫等高度多样化的分类群体所面临的挑战规模，设计具有成本效益且在统计上可靠的监测方法非常重要。加拿大魁北克舍布鲁克大学的研究人员旨在了解农业集约化对昆虫数量及其捕食者（如树燕等空中食虫动物）的影响。自2006年以来，该小组通过从森林到集约化耕地的农业强度梯度的吸力陷阱收集了双翅目丰度和生物量数据。由于广泛的采样工作，在15年的采样期间和广泛的空间尺度上每两天检查一次陷阱，我将能够使用该数据集对qusamubec中大量功能重要的双翅目昆虫的长期趋势提供可靠的分析。我还将测试采样规模和努力如何影响监测农业集约化对昆虫影响的分析结果，以便为未来的采样方案提供最佳采样努力，以捕捉长期趋势。这将有助于填补研究空白，通过重新利用数据集来揭示昆虫在它们构成其他物种（如树燕）重要食物来源的地区的趋势，并为设计更好的昆虫监测和分析方案奠定基础，以了解昆虫数量下降的驱动因素。我的项目将增加我们对全球昆虫种群趋势和下降驱动因素的了解，并为未来昆虫生物多样性研究铺平道路。因此，我们的研究结果将满足英国和加拿大生物多样性政策的研究需求，通过开发有效的方法来捕捉昆虫的长期趋势和环境驱动因素对这些趋势的影响，解决生物多样性丧失问题。它还将为该地区的苍蝇提供一个基线丰度趋势，这将是加拿大新的可持续农业计划所需要的，因为数据集中的地点覆盖了对qu忧郁省农业很重要的一个重要区域。我在实习期间的目标是接触到博士学位之外的技能和经验，比如分类鉴定和与公众的互动，这将使我成为一个更熟练、更善于沟通和合作的研究人员。我的项目将让我接触到加拿大各机构更广泛的人际网络，这样我就可以与我所在领域的专家建立长期合作关系，并进一步发展我未来的学术生涯。

NERC: Kathryn Powell: NE/S007261/1Insects underpin almost all ecosystems on the planet. They provide innumerable services to humans and other species through regulating the environment and providing resources. Abundance and biomass declines in a dominant group of species such as insects, are thought to be particularly damaging to ecosystem health due to the disproportionately large role they play in ecosystem functioning. Local studies have found evidence that insect populations are declining. However, due to data deficiencies and biases, there is yet to be a unified consensus on the extent of insect declines across the globe, and on the contribution of drivers, such as agricultural intensification, on long-term declines. Some of these data deficiencies exist because of fundamental issues with insect sampling and analysis protocols, such as using inappropriate temporal and/or spatial resolution to analyse long-term trends, and varying sampling effort. Given the scale of the challenge to assess a hyper-diverse taxonomic group such as insects, it is important to design cost-efficient yet statistically robust monitoring methods. This project will advance the solutionResearchers at Université de Sherbrooke in Québec, Canada, aim to understand the impact of agricultural intensification on insect abundance and their predators (aerial insectivores such as tree swallows). The group has collected Diptera abundance and biomass data since 2006 from suction traps across gradients of agricultural intensity, from forest to intensively farmed arable fields. Due to extensive sampling effort, with traps checked every two days over the 15-year sampling period and over a wide spatial scale, I will be able to use the dataset to provide robust analysis of long-term trends in abundance of functionally important Diptera in Québec. I will also test how sampling scale and effort affect the outcome of analyses that monitor the impact of agricultural intensification on insects, in order to inform a future sampling protocol with optimal sampling effort for capturing long-term trends. This will help fill research gaps by re-purposing a dataset to uncover insect trends in an area where they constitute an important food source for other species like tree swallows, and laying foundations for the design of better insect monitoring and analysis protocols to understand drivers of decline. My project will both add to our knowledge of insect population trends and drivers of decline across the globe, and pave the way for future insect biodiversity research. The outcomes of our research will therefore meet research needs of both UK and Canadian biodiversity policies, addressing biodiversity loss through developing efficient ways to capture long-term insect trends and the impacts of environmental drivers on these trends. It will also provide a baseline abundance trend for flies in this region, which will be required for Canada's new sustainable agriculture plans, given that the sites in the dataset cover a significant area important for agriculture in Québec. The objectives I will achieve during my placement will bring exposure to skills and experiences outside of my PhD, such as taxonomic identification and interaction with public audiences, and will make me a more skilled, communicative and collaborative researcher. My project will give me exposure to a wider network of people across Canadian institutions so that I may foster long-term partnerships with experts in my field and further develop my future career in academia.