gaiac, Research Institute for Ecosystem Analysis and Assessment, Aachen, Germany.
Bayer AG, Monheim am Rhein, Germany.
PLoS One. 2023 Aug 23;18(8):e0289565. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289565. eCollection 2023.
Insect declines have been discussed intensively among experts, policymakers, and the public. Albeit, decreasing trends have been reported for a long time for various regions in Europe and North America, but the controversial discussion over the role of specific drivers and pressures still remains. A reason for these uncertainties lies within the complex networks of inter-dependent biotic and abiotic factors as well as anthropogenic activities that influence habitats, communities, populations, and individual organisms. Many recent publications aim to identify both the extent of the observed declines and potential drivers. With this literature analysis, we provide an overview of the drivers and pressures and their inter-relationships, which were concluded in the scientific literature, using some of the best-studied insect groups as examples. We conducted a detailed literature evaluation of publications on Carabidae (Coleoptera) and Lepidoptera trends with data for at least 6 years in countries of Central and Western Europe, with a focus on agricultural landscapes. From the 82 publications identified as relevant, we extracted all reported trends and classified the respective factors described according to the DPSIR model. Further, we analysed the level of scientific verification (presumed vs correlated vs examined) within these papers for these cited stressors. The extracted trends for both species groups underline the reported overall declining trend. Whether negative or positive trends were reported in the papers, our semi-quantitative analysis shows that changes in insect populations are primarily anthropogenically driven by agriculture, climate change, nature conservation activities, urbanisation, and other anthropogenic activities. Most of the identified pressures were found to act on habitat level, only a fraction attributed to direct effects to the insects. While our analysis gives an overview of existing research concerning abundance and biodiversity trends of carabids and lepidopterans, it also shows gaps in scientific data in this area, in particular in monitoring the pressures along with the monitoring of abundance trends. The scientific basis for assessing biodiversity changes in the landscape is essential to help all stakeholders involved to shape, e.g. agriculture and other human activities, in a more sustainable way, balancing human needs such as food production with conservation of nature.
昆虫减少在专家、政策制定者和公众中得到了广泛讨论。尽管欧洲和北美的许多地区长期以来一直在报告减少趋势，但对于特定驱动因素和压力的争议性讨论仍在继续。这些不确定性的一个原因在于影响栖息地、群落、种群和个体生物的生物和非生物因素以及人为活动的复杂网络。许多最近的出版物旨在确定观察到的减少程度和潜在驱动因素。通过这项文献分析，我们提供了对驱动因素和压力及其相互关系的概述，这些内容是根据一些研究最充分的昆虫群体得出的，这些群体是从科学文献中得出的。我们对中欧和西欧国家至少 6 年的 Carabidae（鞘翅目）和鳞翅目趋势的文献进行了详细评估，重点关注农业景观。在确定的 82 篇相关出版物中，我们提取了所有报告的趋势，并根据 DPSIR 模型对所描述的相关因素进行了分类。此外，我们分析了这些论文中引用的这些压力源的科学验证程度（假设的、相关的、检查的）。这两个物种组的提取趋势强调了报告的总体下降趋势。无论论文中报告的是负面趋势还是正面趋势，我们的半定量分析表明，昆虫种群的变化主要是由农业、气候变化、自然保护活动、城市化和其他人为活动等人为因素驱动的。大多数确定的压力被认为作用于栖息地层面，只有一小部分归因于对昆虫的直接影响。虽然我们的分析概述了有关鞘翅目和鳞翅目丰度和生物多样性趋势的现有研究，但它也显示了该领域科学数据的空白，特别是在监测压力与监测丰度趋势方面。评估景观生物多样性变化的科学依据对于帮助所有利益相关者以更可持续的方式塑造农业和其他人类活动至关重要，平衡人类对食物生产的需求与保护自然。
