Flying insect biomass is negatively associated with urban cover in surrounding landscapes

Insect Pests and Arthropod Predators Associated with Tree-Turf Landscapes

Flying insect swarms

What to do next? First I decided I would not be fulfilled doing noninvasive behavioural experiments — I need to go into the brain to be happy. I could have chosen computational work but I am an experimentalist at heart. Having that decided, the question was then which species? Where and how was I going to set my new boundary, a personal and arbitrary line without scientific grounding? This proc...

More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

Global declines in insects have sparked wide interest among scientists, politicians, and the general public. Loss of insect diversity and abundance is expected to provoke cascading effects on food webs and to jeopardize ecosystem services. Our understanding of the extent and underlying causes of this decline is based on the abundance of single species or taxonomic groups only, rather than chang...

Augmented respiration in a flying insect

The properties of the gas transport system in a tethered flying insect were investigated by directly measuring the oxygen partial pressure (PO2) in a wing muscle of the sweet potato hawkmoth Agrius convolvuli using a needle electrode. At rest, a distribution of PO2 corresponding to levels in the muscle and tracheal structures was observed. At the onset of tethered flight, PO2 in the muscle decr...

Male attractiveness is negatively genetically associated with investment in copulations

In species with high male mating effort, there is a trade-off between mating effort spent in a current mating and resources left for future matings. Males are therefore expected to allocate resources prudently across successive matings. Attractive males that will have a high mating success might therefore be forced to decrease mating investment in comparison with less-attractive males. Furtherm...