Insecticide exposure alters flight-dependent gene-expression in honey bees, Apis mellifera.

The increased reports of wild bee declines and annual losses of managed bees pose a significant threat to biodiversity and agricultural productivity. While these losses and declines are likely driven by various factors, the exposure of bees to agrochemicals has raised significant concern due to their ubiquitous use and potential adverse effects. Despite numerous studies suggesting neonicotinoids can negatively affect bees at the behavioral and molecular level, data linking these two factors remains sparse.

Insect communities under skyglow: diffuse night-time illuminance induces spatio-temporal shifts in movement and predation.

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is predicted to have far-reaching consequences for natural ecosystems given its influence on organismal physiology and behaviour, species interactions and community composition. Movement and predation are fundamental ecological processes that are of critical importance to ecosystem functioning. The natural movements and foraging behaviours of nocturnal invertebrates may be particularly sensitive to the presence of ALAN.

Individual tracking reveals long-distance flight-path control in a nocturnally migrating moth.

Each year, trillions of insects make long-range seasonal migrations. These movements are relatively well understood at a population level, but how individual insects achieve them remains elusive. Behavioral responses to conditions en route are little studied, primarily owing to the challenges of tracking individual insects.

Emerging technologies revolutionise insect ecology and monitoring.

Insects are the most diverse group of animals on Earth, but their small size and high diversity have always made them challenging to study. Recent technological advances have the potential to revolutionise insect ecology and monitoring. We describe the state of the art of four technologies (computer vision, acoustic monitoring, radar, and molecular methods), and assess their advantages, current limitations, and future potential.

Hoverflies use a time-compensated sun compass to orientate during autumn migration.

The sun is the most reliable celestial cue for orientation available to daytime migrants. It is widely assumed that diurnal migratory insects use a 'time-compensated sun compass' to adjust for the changing position of the sun throughout the day, as demonstrated in some butterfly species. The mechanisms used by other groups of diurnal insect migrants remain to be elucidated.

Adaptive strategies of high-flying migratory hoverflies in response to wind currents.

Large migrating insects, flying at high altitude, often exhibit complex behaviour. They frequently elect to fly on winds with directions quite different from the prevailing direction, and they show a degree of common orientation, both of which facilitate transport in seasonally beneficial directions. Much less is known about the migration behaviour of smaller (10-70 mg) insects.

Pollination by hoverflies in the Anthropocene.

Pollinator declines, changes in land use and climate-induced shifts in phenology have the potential to seriously affect ecosystem function and food security by disrupting pollination services provided by insects. Much of the current research focuses on bees, or groups other insects together as 'non-bee pollinators', obscuring the relative contribution of this diverse group of organisms. Prominent among the 'non-bee pollinators' are the hoverflies, known to visit at least 72% of global food crops, which we estimate to be worth around US$300 billion per year, together with over 70% of animal pollinated wildflowers.

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.

Characterizing animal anatomy and internal composition for electromagnetic modelling in radar entomology.

The use of radar as an observational tool in entomological studies has a long history, and ongoing advances in operational radar networks and radio-frequency technology hold promise for advances in applications such as aerial insect detection, identification and quantification. Realizing this potential requires increasingly sophisticated characterizations of radio-scattering signatures for a broad set of insect taxa, including variability in probing radar wavelength, polarization and aspect angle. Although this task has traditionally been approached through laboratory measurement of radar cross-sections, the effort required to create a comprehensive specimen-based library of scattering signatures would be prohibitive.

Mass Seasonal Migrations of Hoverflies Provide Extensive Pollination and Crop Protection Services.

Despite the fact that migratory insects dominate aerial bioflows in terms of diversity, abundance, and biomass [1-6], the migration patterns of most species, and the effects of their annual fluxes between high- and low-latitude regions, are poorly known. One important group of long-range migrants that remain understudied is a suite of highly beneficial species of hoverfly in the tribe Syrphini, which we collectively term "migrant hoverflies." Adults are key pollinators [7-10] and larvae are significant biocontrol agents of aphid crop pests [11], and thus, it is important to quantify the scale of their migrations and the crucial ecosystem services they provide with respect to energy, nutrient, and biomass transport; regulation of crop pests; and pollen transfer.

Quantification of migrant hoverfly movements (Diptera: Syrphidae) on the West Coast of North America.

The seasonal migration of huge numbers of hoverflies is frequently reported in Europe from mountain passes or spurs of land. The movement of such large numbers of beneficial insects is thought to provide significant ecosystem services in terms of pollination and pest control. Observations from the East Coast of the USA during the 1920s indicate the presence of migratory life histories among some hoverfly species there, but 90 years have now passed since the last reported observation of hoverfly migration in the USA.

Larval and phenological traits predict insect community response to mowing regime manipulations.

For the restoration of biodiversity in agricultural grasslands, it is essential to understand how management acts as an ecological filter on the resident species. Mowing constitutes such a filter: only species that possess functional traits enabling them to withstand its consequences can persist in the community. We investigated how the timing of mowing modulates this filtering effect for insects.

Higher flight activity in the offspring of migrants compared to residents in a migratory insect.

Migration has evolved among many animal taxa and migratory species are found across all major lineages. Insects are the most abundant and diverse terrestrial migrants, with trillions of animals migrating annually. Partial migration, where populations consist of resident and migratory individuals, is ubiquitous among many taxa.

Cooperative Extension: A Model of Science-Practice Integration for Ecosystem Restoration.

Restoration ecology is a science, driven by practical application. Despite the well-recognized disconnect between the science and practice of ecological restoration, there is a lack of practical solutions. In 2014, US agriculture marked the 100th anniversary of the Cooperative Extension Service, providing a timely reminder that the divide between science and practice can be bridged successfully.

Does metabolic rate and evaporative water loss reflect differences in migratory strategy in sexually dimorphic hoverflies?

A typical explanation for ecologically stable strategies that apply to only a proportion of a population, is bet hedging, where increased reproductive success offsets reduced reproductive rate. One such is partial migration, where only a proportion of a population moves seasonally to avoid inclement climatic conditions. Bet hedging may overlook unseen costs to maintain broad physiological resilience, implied by encountering a breadth of environmental conditions.

Discovery of pyrazines as pollinator sex pheromones and orchid semiochemicals: implications for the evolution of sexual deception.

Sexually deceptive orchids employ floral volatiles to sexually lure their specific pollinators. How and why this pollination system has evolved independently on multiple continents remains unknown, although preadaptation is considered to have been important. Understanding the chemistry of sexual deception is a crucial first step towards solving this mystery.

Mate-searching behaviour of common and rare wasps and the implications for pollen movement of the sexually deceptive orchids they pollinate.

Pollinator behaviour directly affects patterns of pollen movement and outcrossing rates in plants. In orchids pollinated by sexual deception of insects, patterns of pollen movement are primarily determined by the mate-searching behaviour of the deceived males. Here, using a capture-mark-recapture study (CMR) and dietary analysis, we compare mate-searching behaviour in relation to local abundance of two pollinator species and explore the implications for pollen movement in sexually deceptive Drakaea (Orchidaceae).

Reconnecting plants and pollinators: challenges in the restoration of pollination mutualisms.

Ecological restoration of plant-pollinator interactions has received surprisingly little attention, despite animal-mediated pollination underpinning reproduction of the majority of higher plants. Here, we offer a conceptual and practical framework for the ecological restoration of pollination mutualisms. Through the use of targeted restoration plantings to attract and sustain pollinators and increased knowledge of the ecological requirements of pollinators, we propose that pollination could be successfully restored in degraded ecosystems.