Looking for Collaborators for study of insect abundance across North America
This university project is looking for locations to set up monitoring traps (which must be purchased by the site host). If you work with a school or other facility where the study could host a trap feel free to reach out to Peter at contact info below.
Dear Colleagues
We are inviting you to join our collaborative network studying insect abundance, the North American Insect Abundance Network (NAIN)(https://uccsplantecology.com/north-american-insect-abundance-network/).
This year we will be starting our 6th year of sampling using Malaise traps at 136 locations spread across Canada and the US. We have found that insect abundance (biomass) is lower in North America than in Germany where biomass declined 75% over 35 years (Hallman et al. 2017. PLoS One, 12(10), e0185809). Biomass also shows significant changes over the past five years of our study, but these trends vary depending on the geographic region of the continent and taxonomic group. We need your help to expand the study and increase our sample size.
Our study is designed to detect insect declines of 1-5% (the long term averages from meta-analyses) with just 1 to 5 more years of sampling. Based on this projection, we are inviting more collaborators to help us determine if there is a continuing, large-scale decline of insects in North America. We also plan to address potential causes of differences in abundance by expanding the habitats sampled to sites such as farms and urban areas with more human impacts.
Our project is designed for almost anyone to participate. The minimum contribution involves setting up a Malaise trap and collecting three samples from it, typically in May & June. Each sampling period is 3 days (72 hrs). Collaborators can sort the samples (to at least Order) and weigh them themselves, or send the samples to me for processing. It does not get much easier.
The main caveat is that I do not have funds to purchase the Malaise trap you need (discounted for this project to about $200 + $36 shipping from BugDorm). If you want this discount on purchasing a trap please contact me asap.
This could be an excellent project for public outreach or school projects. It is an engaging and important question that students and the public can help to answer. Indeed we already have over 10 Nature Centers and NGOs participating.
You can read more about the results of the first three years of our study in the May 2023 issue of Ecology (OA paper at: doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4036). As in the past, all collaborators who send in data will be authors on the resulting papers. If you are interested in participating, please contact me for more information, and please forward this to anyone you think might be interested.
Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Peter Dunn pdunn@uwm.edu
Emerit Professor of Biol. Sciences
Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
