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

NERC：Kathryn Powell：NE/S 007261/1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了无数的服务。昆虫等主要物种的减少和生物量的减少被认为对生态系统健康特别有害，因为它们在生态系统功能中发挥着不成比例的巨大作用。当地的研究发现昆虫数量正在减少的证据。然而，由于数据不足和存在偏差，关于地球仪昆虫减少的程度以及农业集约化等驱动因素对长期减少的影响，尚未达成统一共识。其中一些数据不足的原因是昆虫采样和分析规程存在根本性问题，例如使用不适当的时间和/或空间分辨率来分析长期趋势，以及采样工作参差不齐。鉴于评估昆虫等高度多样化的分类群体的挑战规模，设计具有成本效益但在统计上可靠的监测方法至关重要。该项目将推进解决方案加拿大魁北克省舍布鲁克大学的研究人员旨在了解农业集约化对昆虫丰度及其捕食者（如树燕等空中食虫动物）的影响。自2006年以来，该小组收集了从森林到集约耕作耕地的农业强度梯度的吸力陷阱中的双翅目丰度和生物量数据。由于广泛的采样工作，在15年的采样期内每两天检查一次陷阱，并且在广泛的空间范围内，我将能够使用数据集来提供魁北克重要功能双翅目丰度的长期趋势的强大分析。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的影响的分析结果，以便为未来的采样协议提供最佳采样努力，以捕捉长期趋势。这将通过重新利用数据集来揭示昆虫构成树燕等其他物种重要食物来源的地区的昆虫趋势，并为设计更好的昆虫监测和分析方案以了解昆虫数量减少的原因奠定基础，从而有助于填补研究空白。我的项目将增加我们对昆虫种群趋势和地球仪下降驱动因素的了解，并为未来的昆虫生物多样性研究铺平道路。因此，我们的研究成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长期昆虫趋势以及环境驱动因素对这些趋势的影响，从而解决生物多样性丧失问题。它还将提供该地区苍蝇的基线丰度趋势，这将是加拿大新的可持续农业计划所需的，因为数据集中的站点覆盖了魁北克农业的重要区域。我将在我的位置实现的目标将带来接触到我的博士学位以外的技能和经验，如分类鉴定和与公众的互动，并将使我成为一个更熟练，沟通和协作的研究人员。我的项目将让我接触到加拿大各机构更广泛的人际网络，以便我可以与我所在领域的专家建立长期的合作关系，并进一步发展我未来的学术事业。

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.