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

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TLDR
This analysis estimates a seasonal decline of 76%, and mid-summer decline of 82% in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study, and shows that this decline is apparent regardless of habitat type, while changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics cannot explain this overall decline.
Abstract
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 changes in insect biomass which is more relevant for ecological functioning. Here, we used a standardized protocol to measure total insect biomass using Malaise traps, deployed over 27 years in 63 nature protection areas in Germany (96 unique location-year combinations) to infer on the status and trend of local entomofauna. Our analysis estimates a seasonal decline of 76%, and mid-summer decline of 82% in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study. We show that this decline is apparent regardless of habitat type, while changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics cannot explain this overall decline. This yet unrecognized loss of insect biomass must be taken into account in evaluating declines in abundance of species depending on insects as a food source, and ecosystem functioning in the European landscape.

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Posted ContentDOI

Worldwide occurrence records reflect a global decline in bee species richness

TL;DR: The number of collected bee species declines steeply, and approximately 25% fewer species were reported between 2006 and 2015 relative to the number of species counted before the 1990’s.
Journal ArticleDOI

A New Keyword in the Museum: Exhibiting the Anthropocene

TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe 41 exhibitions about the Anthropocene, analyzes how museums and galleries understand the anthropocene, and how they use exhibition media as well as their authority as museums in dealing with this topic.
Dissertation

"The pond pollinator pantry" : assessing how pond management influences pollinators in the UK farmland landscape

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the drivers of pollinator utilisation of farmland pond systems based on the presence of woody vegetation management, as well as examining historical changes to ponds ecosystems as a means to informing on past pond-plant-pollinator environments and the influence of historic management practices relative to contemporary UK pond restoration approaches.
Journal ArticleDOI

Comparison of destructive and nondestructive DNA extraction methods for the metabarcoding of arthropod bulk samples

TL;DR: Results indicate that non-destructive DNA extraction from incubation in lysis buffer could provide a comparable alternative to destructive approaches with the added advantage of preserving the specimens for post-metabarcoding taxonomic work but at a higher cost per sample.
Journal ArticleDOI

Der BISA-Test: Ermittlung der Formenkenntnis von Schülern am Beispiel einheimischer Vogelarten

TL;DR: In this paper, Schulerinnen und Schuler Amsel und Rotkehlchen erkennte 15,000 Vogelarten an knapp 2000 Schuler-innen and Schulern, und der result is that the Bekanntheit einzelner Arten erweist sich durch einen Vergleich with Vorlauferstudien in den vergangenen zehn years.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4

TL;DR: In this article, a model is described in an lmer call by a formula, in this case including both fixed-and random-effects terms, and the formula and data together determine a numerical representation of the model from which the profiled deviance or the profeatured REML criterion can be evaluated as a function of some of model parameters.
Journal ArticleDOI

Inference from Iterative Simulation Using Multiple Sequences

TL;DR: The focus is on applied inference for Bayesian posterior distributions in real problems, which often tend toward normal- ity after transformations and marginalization, and the results are derived as normal-theory approximations to exact Bayesian inference, conditional on the observed simulations.
Journal ArticleDOI

Bayesian measures of model complexity and fit

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider the problem of comparing complex hierarchical models in which the number of parameters is not clearly defined and derive a measure pD for the effective number in a model as the difference between the posterior mean of the deviances and the deviance at the posterior means of the parameters of interest, which is related to other information criteria and has an approximate decision theoretic justification.
Journal ArticleDOI

Global pollinator declines: trends, impacts and drivers.

TL;DR: The nature and extent of reported declines, and the potential drivers of pollinator loss are described, including habitat loss and fragmentation, agrochemicals, pathogens, alien species, climate change and the interactions between them are reviewed.

JAGS: A program for analysis of Bayesian graphical models using Gibbs sampling

TL;DR: JAGS is a program for Bayesian Graphical modelling which aims for compatibility with Classic BUGS and could eventually be developed as an R package.
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