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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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Changes in the bee fauna of a German botanical garden between 1997 and 2017, attributable to climate warming, not other parameters.

TL;DR: Analysis of the Munich Botanical Garden’s bee fauna in 1997/1999 and again in 2015/2017 highlights the potential of botanic gardens with their artificially diverse and near-pesticide-free floras as systems in which to investigate climate change per se as a possible factor in shifting insect diversity.
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Recent climate change is creating hotspots of butterfly increase and decline across North America

TL;DR: This paper examined abundance and biodiversity trends for North American butterflies using a unique citizen-science dataset that has recorded observations of over 8 million butterflies across 456 species, 503 sites, nine ecoregions, and 26 years.
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Nuanced changes in insect abundance.

TL;DR: A thorough global assessment of insect abundance and biomass trends is conducted and paints a more nuanced picture than that predicted by extrapolations.
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Declines and Resilience of Communities of Leaf Chewing Insects on Missouri Oaks Following Spring Frost and Summer Drought

TL;DR: Evidence is presented that late spring frosts and summer drought negatively affect the community of insects found on Missouri oaks, amounting to a 23-186 fold decrease depending on the oak species, insect size and feeding guild, and the specific weather event.
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Cities in deep time: Bio-diversity, metabolic rift, and the urban question

Matthew Gandy
- 15 Mar 2018 - 
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors interpret the relationship between urbanization and the loss of bio-diversity, and the discourse of bio diversity serves as a critical lens through which the accelerating momentum of metamorphosis is viewed.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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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