Effects of land cover and protected areas on flying insect diversity.

Widespread insect losses are a critical global problem. Mitigating this problem requires identifying the principal drivers across different taxa and determining which insects are covered by protected areas. However, doing so is hindered by missing information on most species owing to extremely high insect diversity and difficulties in morphological identification.

Upscaling biodiversity monitoring: Metabarcoding estimates 31,846 insect species from Malaise traps across Germany.

Mitigating ongoing losses of insects and their key functions (e.g. pollination) requires tracking large-scale and long-term community changes.

Author Correction: A global database for metacommunity ecology, integrating species, traits, environment and space.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

A summary of eight traits of Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Orthoptera and Araneae, occurring in grasslands in Germany.

Analyses of species traits have increased our understanding of how environmental drivers such as disturbances affect the composition of arthropod communities and related processes. There are, however, few studies on which traits in the arthropod community are affected by environmental changes and which traits affect ecosystem functioning. The assembly of arthropod traits of several taxa is difficult because of the large number of species, limited availability of trait databases and differences in available traits.

Sustainable control of mosquito larvae in the field by the combined actions of the biological insecticide Bti and natural competitors.

Integrated management of mosquitoes is becoming increasingly important, particularly in relation to avoiding recolonization of ponds after larvicide treatment. We conducted for the first time field experiments that involved exposing natural populations of the mosquito species Culex pipiens to: a) application of the biological insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti), b) the introduction of natural competitors (a crustacean community composed mainly of Daphnia spp.), or c) a combined treatment that involved both introduction of a crustacean community and the application of Bti.

Advantages of volunteer-based biodiversity monitoring in Europe.

Without robust and unbiased systems for monitoring, changes in natural systems will remain enigmatic for policy makers, leaving them without a clear idea of the consequences of any environmental policies they might adopt. Generally, biodiversity-monitoring activities are not integrated or evaluated across any large geographic region. The EuMon project conducted the first large-scale evaluation of monitoring practices in Europe through an on-line questionnaire and is reporting on the results of this survey.

Long-term reactions of plants and macroinvertebrates to extreme floods in floodplain grasslands.

Extreme summertime flood events are expected to become more frequent in European rivers due to climate change. In temperate areas, where winter floods are common, extreme floods occurring in summer, a period of high physiological activity, may seriously impact floodplain ecosystems. Here we report on the effects of the 2002 extreme summer flood on flora and fauna of the riverine grasslands of the Middle Elbe (Germany), comparing pre- and post-flooding data collected by identical methods.

Functional richness of local hoverfly communities (Diptera, Syrphidae) in response to land use across temperate Europe.

Environmental change is not likely to act on biodiversity in a random manner, but rather according to species traits that affect assembly processes, thus, having potentially serious consequences on ecological functions. We investigated the effects of anthropogenic land use on functional richness of local hoverfly communities of 24 agricultural landscapes across temperate Europe. A multivariate ordination separated seven functional groups based on resource use, niche characteristics and response type.