Elsevier

Biological Conservation

Volume 215, November 2017, Pages 213-224
Biological Conservation

Perspective
Bias and perspectives in insect conservation: A European scale analysis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2017.07.033Get rights and content

Highlights

  • In Europe, only 0.12% of insect species are protected by law.

  • This study compared the characteristics of protected and unprotected species.

  • Taxonomical, ecological, morphological and ‘well-knownness’ bias were revealed.

  • Species lists should be improved and regularly updated.

  • We recommend moving towards assemblage-based conservation.

Abstract

Insects are among the most diverse and abundant organisms on Earth, and they play a major role in ecosystem functioning. To protect them from decline, some conservation measures have been put in place, based primarily on threatened species lists. This is the case in Europe, where 123 of the 105,000 known European insect species are currently protected. Yet how were these few species selected? Are those species representative of the European entomofauna? Is it possible for a conservation policy based on the protection of only 0.12% of described species to be effective?

In this study, we aimed to measure bias in the selection of species for conservation by comparing protected and unprotected species in Europe. To this end, we considered 15 characteristics divided into five main categories: ‘Taxonomy’, ‘Morphology’, ‘Diet’, ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Distribution’. We investigated bias in species selection and found that protected species were significantly larger, better known, more widespread and more multicoloured than a randomly selected set of unprotected species. Moreover, butterflies, dragonflies and grasshoppers were overrepresented, as were nectarivorous and saproxylophagous species. In contrast, Hymenopterans and Dipterans, together representing > 40% of European entomofauna, do not appear on the current list of protected species.

To address this bias, we propose recommendations to improve the protection of insects at the European scale, including making lists more ‘dynamic’, introducing new criteria, and a paradigm shift towards conserving assemblages and ecological function. Existing technical and societal means could be used to achieve an integrative conservation approach for insects.

Introduction

Insects (Insecta Class) represent the organisms with the highest abundance, biomass and diversity in the animal kingdom (Pyle et al., 1981, Wilson, 1987, Kim, 1993). They occupy almost every type of terrestrial and aquatic habitat and provide numerous ecosystem services (Wilson, 1987, Huis, 2014). Losey and Vaughan (2006) estimated that the value of ecological services related to insects (e.g. dung burial, pest control, pollination and wildlife dietary needs) was at least US$57 billion annually in the United States. However, insects are no exception to the extinction crisis affecting biodiversity across the globe; indeed, their level of threat may be underestimated (Shaw and Hochberg, 2001, Dunn, 2005, Fonseca, 2009, Clausnitzer et al., 2009, Pimm et al., 2014, Vogel, 2017). Habitat fragmentation and destruction, biological invasion, pollution, climate change and the synergetic effects of these are major threats to insects (Samways, 1994, Samways, 2007a, Huis, 2014). Despite calls for action (Lewis et al., 2007, Leather et al., 2008), insects, and more generally invertebrates, are often neglected in conservation strategies, which typically focus on vertebrates (Schuldt and Assmann, 2010, Small, 2012, Donaldson et al., 2016).

While insect conservation has been demonstrated to be necessary (Leather et al., 2008), it is a difficult task for several reasons: (1) their tremendous diversity, with some 1 million species described worldwide (Resh and Cardé, 2009) and 105,016 species described in Europe alone (Jong et al., 2014), (2) the taxonomic impediment (gaps in taxonomic knowledge), (3) the difficulty of monitoring cryptic organisms, (4) the lack of biological knowledge about the majority of insect species, and, last but by no means least, (5) the limited value that society puts on insects (Lewis et al., 2007).

Historically, the first insect conservation measure in Europe was the protection of the charismatic Apollo butterfly Parnassius apollo (Linnaeus, 1758) by the state of Bavaria in 1835 (Samways, 1994). Since 1963, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has encouraged European countries to make both Red Lists for specific geographical areas and joint Red Lists, including for insects (Warren et al., 2007). In the late 1970s, these Red Lists were the basis for the first legislation throughout Europe: the Council of Europe's (CE) 1979 Bern Convention. However, the original Bern Convention did not include any invertebrates – the first of these were added in 1987 by a group of experts working for the CE (Haslett, 2012). The inclusion of insects was not self-evident, as Haslett, one of these experts, states: ‘In those early years, for me and for many other entomologists, the [Bern] Convention appeared to be of only marginal interest, as no specific provision was made for protecting any species of invertebrates’ (Haslett, 2012). Later, specialists decided to revise the Bern Convention list in order to add more invertebrate species. However, during the process, a new political framework was launched: the European Union's (EU) Habitats Directive, which was enacted in 1992. Thus, the unrevised Bern list served as the basis for the Habitats Directive, despite the fact that it did not cover the same geographical range and was not drawn up in line with the objectives of the new strategy (Helsdingen, 1997, Haslett, 2012).

Since the publication the Bern Convention and the Habitats Directive, neither list of protected species has been updated. Only 123 insect species (of the 105,016 recorded in Europe; i.e. 0.12%) are currently protected. This raises certain questions: How were these species selected? What parameters were used to determine the ‘feasibility’ or ‘desirability’ of protecting a species (Helsdingen, 1997)? Are the selected species representative of entomofauna diversity in Europe? Does protecting these species permit the conservation of entomofauna as a whole? Indeed, previous studies have expressed concern about potential bias regarding the protection of insects at the European scale (Cardoso, 2012), as well as the effectiveness of European strategies for insect conservation (Schuldt and Assmann, 2010, Trochet and Schmeller, 2013). For decades, efforts have been made to put insects onto the agenda of conservation goals at a European level, but this has not yet achieved satisfactory results, according to Helsdingen (1997) and Haslett (2012).

To address these questions, we aimed to quantify any biases related to the selection of the 123 protected insect species listed in the Bern Convention and the Habitats Directive and to investigate if these species are representative of European entomofauna. As our findings indeed revealed bias in the current legislation, we then developed recommendations to overcome this in order to enhance the conservation of European entomofauna.

Section snippets

Protected vs unprotected insect species

The list of protected insects in Europe came from the Bern Convention and the Habitats Directive (n = 123). To establish a list of unprotected insect species as a null model for our analysis, we randomly selected 123 unprotected species from the Fauna Europaea (FE) database (www.fauna-eu.org; Jong et al., 2014; data downloaded on June 2016). The random selection was computed using the sample function in R software, version 3.1.1 (R Core team, 2016).

Species characteristics

To quantify eventual biases related to the

Results and discussion

In our comparison of protected species with a set of randomly selected unprotected species, we identified bias in 13 of the 15 studied characteristics (Table 1).

Perspectives

In a context of limited funding, conserving biodiversity means choosing priorities. The current dominant paradigm in conservation is focused on species as the conservation unit (a ‘species-centred’ approach) (Fazey et al., 2005, Mace et al., 2007). Good candidates for conservation are vulnerable species that are easy to detect (unmistakable) and are good ambassadors (representative and charismatic). But few insects reflect these qualities, so how to protect the vast majority of invertebrate

Conclusion

Insect conservation cannot be achieved in the same way as vertebrate conservation – a change of paradigm is needed to make the former possible. To this end, scientists, conservation organizations and policymakers must increase their collaboration and share knowledge and efforts at different scales to take insect conservation forward. Beyond policy, scientists and stakeholders concerned with the protection of insects also need to reach out to the public to share their knowledge, and to raise

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank HP Aberlenc, M Aubert, P Rousse, G Delvare and J Haran for sharing their naturalist expertise. We also thank S Jaulin and B Louboutin for lending us many useful documents from the Council of Europe. We are also grateful to the Entomology Department of France's National Museum of Natural History, in particular, A Touret-Alby, A Mantilleri, A Taghavian-Azari, H Perrin, J Guglielmi and T Deuve, for allowing us to access their collections, including the bibliographic

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