Editorial
2015; Wiley; Volume: 40; Issue: S1 Linguagem: Romeno
10.1111/een.12231
ISSN1365-2311
Autores Tópico(s)Animal and Plant Science Education
ResumoEcological EntomologyVolume 40, Issue S1 p. 1-2 EditorialFree Access Editorial JANE C. STOUT, JANE C. STOUT Guest Associate EditorsSearch for more papers by this authorJOHN A. FINN, JOHN A. FINN Guest Associate EditorsSearch for more papers by this author JANE C. STOUT, JANE C. STOUT Guest Associate EditorsSearch for more papers by this authorJOHN A. FINN, JOHN A. FINN Guest Associate EditorsSearch for more papers by this author First published: 25 August 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/een.12231Citations: 3AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Recognising the value of insects in providing ecosystem services The concept that biodiversity and healthy functioning ecosystems provide goods and services of benefit and value to human wellbeing has been accepted for decades, but it was the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005), which cemented the concept of 'ecosystem services' into today's environmental policies and management. The concept is a useful tool for linking ecosystem functions with human wellbeing in a range of decision-making contexts, although it can over-simplify the complexity of ecological systems (Norgaard, 2010). For insects, their role in regulating pest populations in agriculture and plant pollination has been recognised for many years, but in Schulze and Mooney's (1994) seminal book Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function, it is notable and surprising that the contribution of insects to ecosystem services barely received a mention. A decade later, Insects and Ecosystem Function appeared (Weisser & Siemann, 2004), which opened with the following statement: 'In contrast [to plants], our understanding of the role of insects in ecosystem processes is relatively primitive. Because insects are a dominant component of biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems, this state of knowledge is unsatisfactory'. In the last decade, since the publication of this book, there has been a notable increase in articles on insect ecosystem service provision published (Fig. 1), and the concept is clearly gaining traction as a useful mechanism to illustrate the ecological and economic value of insects. Figure 1Open in figure viewerPowerPoint The number of published papers with 'ecosystem service* insect*' included as 'topic' (from Web of Science) from 2004 to 2014. In particular, the role of insects in providing ecosystem services in agricultural contexts has been recognised, largely in terms of their influence on provisioning services, such as crop yields. Herbivorous insects and the damage they inflict both directly through consumption of plant material, and indirectly through the transmission of plant pathogens, have attracted the majority of research attention from ecological entomologists. However, at all trophic levels, insects provide services which can be fundamental to crop production, including pollination of entomophilous crops to ensure seed and/or fruit production, population regulation of pests by natural enemies (biocontrol) to prevent crop damage/loss, and the decomposition of dead and waste material to recycle nutrients required for crop growth. This focus on services that contribute to yield, however, has meant that the contribution of these services to the wider agricultural ecosystem has been largely ignored. For example, insects are important pollinators of wild hedgerow plants and rare agricultural weeds (Jacobs et al., 2009), which not only provide seeds and berries for farmland birds and other wildlife, but also other supporting, regulating, and cultural services (Hinsley & Bellamy, 2000). Thus, perturbations to insect populations in agricultural systems can affect rates of herbivory, pollination, predation, and decomposition. In turn, such perturbations could have profound consequences for the structure and composition of biological communities, and thus knock-on impacts on the delivery of a whole host of services from the agricultural ecosystem. Beyond agricultural systems, insects also provide other, largely overlooked, services. For example, insects deliver provisioning services directly, and there is increasing recognition that eating insects as an alternative protein source could aid their conservation (Yen, 2009) and counteract climate change (Premalatha et al., 2011). Although recently, crickets have been shown not to have such efficient conversion rates as previously claimed (Lundy & Parrella, 2015). In addition, by burying dung, insects contribute to not only to its decomposition, a key supporting service, but also to regulating services via the suppression of pathogens of both livestock and humans (Ryan et al., 2011). Insects can also provide services to commercial waste treatment, through the conversion of organic waste into nutrient-rich humus, and their larvae can provide protein-rich animal feed for chickens, pigs, and aquaculture (Diener et al., 2009). Finally, insects can also provide cultural services and non-material benefits, such as recreation and education benefits, and act as flagships for conservation. In the case of the latter, bees have become the invertebrate equivalent to the giant panda or tiger in terms of stimulating people to support and implement conservation. All of these services are valuable, and for some of them we can calculate an economic value (Losey & Vaughan, 2006). This can be controversial, however, with some people arguing that economic valuations are over-simplified and thus flawed and that we should not even attempt to put a value on something as priceless as natural ecosystems and their component parts. Others argue that putting an economic value on services is the only way to make sure they are accounted for, and incorporated into decision-making. Certainly, much of the focus on the bee conservation policy and practice uses the argument that bees provide economic benefits to farmers in terms of crop yields. In this Special Issue, arising from a Royal Entomological Society International Symposium at Trinity College Dublin in September 2015, a total of 11 reviews and original research articles address the broad issue of ecosystem service provision by insects. These articles address agricultural services, including pest management (Midega et al., 2015; Bengtsson, 2015; Schäckermann et al., 2015; Macfadyen et al., 2015), pollination (Dicks et al., 2015; Birkin & Goulson, 2015), and waste decomposition (Beynon et al., 2015; Ulyshen et al., 2015), as well as cultural services (Leather, 2015), and service provision in specific systems (Cross et al., 2015; Macadam et al., 2015). Furthermore, this issue addresses key contemporary issues of economic value of services (Cross et al., 2015; Beynon et al., 2015), how science can inform policy to enhance service providers (Dicks et al., 2015), and the use of citizen science to measure service provision (Birkin & Goulson, 2015). Additionally, two papers emphasise the importance of taking a landscape-scale approach when assessing services in agroecosystems (Schäckermann et al., 2015; Macfadyen et al., 2015). Judging by the trajectory of Fig. 1, we can all look forward to the continued development of research on the effects of insects on ecosystem function and the delivery of services. We hope that this Special Issue contributes to this effort. Acknowledgements We are grateful to all authors for contributing their work to this Special Issue, reviewers for improving manuscripts, the Ento 15 conference convenors (Archie Murchie, Olaf Schmidt, Brian Nelson, and Catherine Bertrand) and the Royal Entomological Society for supporting the meeting in Trinity College Dublin. References Bengtsson, J. (2015) Biological control as an ecosystem service: Partitioning contributions of nature and human inputs to yield. Ecological Entomology, 40(S1), 45– 55. Beynon, S.A., Wainwright, W.A. & Christie, M. (2015) The application of an ecosystem services framework to estimate the economic value of dung beetles to the U.K. cattle industry. Ecological Entomology, 40(S1), 124– 135. Birkin, L. & Goulson, D. (2015) Using citizen science to monitor pollination services. Ecological Entomology, 40(S1), 3– 11. Cross, J., Fountain, M., Markó, V. & Nagy, C. (2015) Arthropod ecosystem services in apple orchards and their economic benefits. Ecological Entomology, 40(S1), 82– 96. Dicks, L.V., Baude, M., Roberts, S.P.M., Phillips, J., Green, M. & Carvell, C. (2015) How much flower-rich habitat is enough for wild pollinators? Answering a key policy question with incomplete knowledge. Ecological Entomology, 40(S1), 22– 35. Diener, S., Zurbrügg, C. & Tockner, K. (2009) Conversion of organic material by black soldier fly larvae – establishing optimal feeding rates. Waste Management and Research, 27, 603– 610. Hinsley, S.A. & Bellamy, P.E. (2000) The influence of hedge structure, management and landscape context on the value of hedgerows to birds: a review. Journal of Environmental Management, 60, 33– 49. Jacobs, J.H., Clark, S.J., Denholm, I., Goulson, D., Stoate, C. & Osborne, J.L. (2009) Pollination biology of fruit-bearing hedgerow plants and the role of flower-visiting insects in fruit-set. Annals of Botany, 104, 1397– 1404. Leather, S.R. (2015) Influential entomology: a short review of the scientific, societal, economic and educational services provided by entomology. Ecological Entomology, 40(S1), 36– 44. Losey, J.E. & Vaughan, M. (2006) The economic value of ecological services provided by insects. Bioscience, 56, 311– 323. Lundy, M.E. & Parrella, M.P. (2015) Crickets are not a free lunch: protein capture from scalable organic side-streams via high-density populations of Acheta domesticus. PLoS One, 10, e0118785. Macadam, C.R. & Stockan, J.A. (2015) More than just fish food: ecosystem services provided by freshwater insects. Ecological Entomology, 40(S1), 113– 123. Macfadyen, S., Kramer, E., Parry, H. & Schellhorn, N.A. (2015) Temporal change in vegetation productivity in grain production landscapes: linking landscape complexity with pest and natural enemy communities. Ecological Entomology, 40(S1), 56– 69. Midega, C.A.O., Bruce, T.J.A., Pickett, J.A. & Khan, Z.R. (2015) Ecological management of cereal stemborers in African smallholder agriculture through behavioural manipulation. Ecological Entomology, 40(S1), 70– 81. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Ecosystems and Human Well-Being. Synthesis Island Press, Washington, District of Columbia. Norgaard, R.B. (2010) Ecosystem services: from eye-opening metaphor to complexity blinder. Ecological Economics, 69, 1219– 1227. Premalatha, M., Abbasi, T., Abbasi, T. & Abbasi, S.A. (2011) Energy-efficient food production to reduce global warming and ecodegradation: the use of edible insects. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 15, 4357– 4360. Ryan, U., Yang, R., Gordon, C. & Doube, B. (2011) Effect of dung burial by the dung beetle Bubas bison on numbers and viability of Cryptosporidium oocysts in cattle dung. Experimental Parasitology, 129, 1– 4. Schäkermann, J., Pufal, G., Mandelik, Y. & Klein, A.-M. (2015) Agro-ecosystem services and dis-services in almond orchards are differentially influenced by the surrounding landscape. Ecological Entomology, 40(S1), 12– 21. E.-D. Schulze & H. A. Mooney (eds) (1994) Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany. Ulyshen, M.D. (2015) Insect-mediated nitrogen dynamics in decomposing wood. Ecological Entomology, 40(S1), 97– 112. W. W. Weisser & E. Siemann (eds) (2004) Insects and Ecosystem Function. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany. Yen, A. (2009) Entomophagy and insect conservation: some thoughts for digestion. Journal of Insect Conservation, 13, 667– 670. Citing Literature Volume40, IssueS1Supplement: Insects and Ecosystem Services, 28th Symposium of the Royal Entomological Society of LondonSeptember 2015Pages 1-2 FiguresReferencesRelatedInformation
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