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We describe 2 artificial stream experiments that exposed aquatic insect communities to zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), and cadmium (year 2014) and to Zn, Cu, and nickel (year 2015). The testing strategy was to concurrently expose insect communities to single metals and mixtures. Single‐metal tests were repeated to evaluate the reproducibility of the methods and year‐to‐year variability. Metals were strongly accumulated in sediments, periphyton, and insect (caddisfly) tissues, with the highest concentrations occurring in periphyton. Sensitive mayflies declined in metal treatments, and effect concentrations could be predicted effectively from metal concentrations in either periphyton or water. Most responses were similar in the replicated tests, but median effect concentration values for the mayfly Rhithrogena sp. varied 20‐fold between the tests, emphasizing the difficulty comparing sensitivities across studies and the value of repeated testing. Relative to the single‐metal responses, the toxicity of the mixtures was either approximately additive or less than additive when calculated as the product of individual responses (response addition). However, even less‐than‐additive relative responses were sometimes greater than responses to similar concentrations tested singly. The ternary mixtures resulted in mayfly declines at concentrations that caused no declines in the concurrent single‐metal tests. When updating species‐sensitivity distributions (SSDs) with these results, the mayfly responses were among the most sensitive 10th percentile of available data for all 4 metals, refuting older literature placing mayflies in the insensitive portion of metal SSDs. Testing translocated aquatic insect communities in 30‐d artificial streams is an efficient approach to generate multiple species effect values under quasi‐natural conditions that are relevant to natural streams. Environ Toxicol Chem 2020;39:812–833. Published 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of SETAC. This article is a US government work, and as such, is in the ...

cited By 0 ; International audience ; Insect pollinators provide vital ecosystem services through its maintenance of plant biological diversity and its role in food production. Indeed, adequate pollination services can increase the production and quality of fruit and vegetable crops. This service is currently challenged by land use intensification and expanding human population growth. Hence, this study aims: (1) to assess the pollination services in different land uses with different levels of disturbance through GIS mapping technique using insect pollinators abundance and richness as indicators, and (2) estimate the economic value of pollination by insects in agricultural crops. Our study takes place in a small oceanic island, Terceira (Azores, Portugal). Our results showed, remarkably, that not only the pristine vegetation areas, but also the orchards and agricultural areas have relatively high values of pollination services, even though both land uses have opposite disturbance levels. For the economic valuation, we analyzed 24 crops in the island and found that 18 depend on pollinators with one-third of these crops having 65% or 95% dependence on pollinators. The economic contribution of pollinators totals 36.2% of the total mean annual agricultural income of the dependent crops, highlighting the importance of insect pollinators in agricultural production and consequent economic gain productions.

cited By 0 ; International audience ; Insect pollinators provide vital ecosystem services through its maintenance of plant biological diversity and its role in food production. Indeed, adequate pollination services can increase the production and quality of fruit and vegetable crops. This service is currently challenged by land use intensification and expanding human population growth. Hence, this study aims: (1) to assess the pollination services in different land uses with different levels of disturbance through GIS mapping technique using insect pollinators abundance and richness as indicators, and (2) estimate the economic value of pollination by insects in agricultural crops. Our study takes place in a small oceanic island, Terceira (Azores, Portugal). Our results showed, remarkably, that not only the pristine vegetation areas, but also the orchards and agricultural areas have relatively high values of pollination services, even though both land uses have opposite disturbance levels. For the economic valuation, we analyzed 24 crops in the island and found that 18 depend on pollinators with one-third of these crops having 65% or 95% dependence on pollinators. The economic contribution of pollinators totals 36.2% of the total mean annual agricultural income of the dependent crops, highlighting the importance of insect pollinators in agricultural production and consequent economic gain productions.

AbstractAgricultural management has a great influence on biodiversity and its services in agroecosystems. In Europe, a relevant proportion of biodiversity is dependent on low-input agriculture. To assess the effects of agricultural management on biodiversity, in this study we surveyed the communities of arable plants, diurnal flying insects, and pollinators in three conventional and in two organic fields of a traditional Elephant garlic (Allium ampeloprasum L.) crop of the Valdichiana area, in Tuscany (central Italy). The sampling was carried out twice during the season: in spring, during crop growing, and in summer, after crop harvesting. We assessed the effects of the different agricultural management on the richness and composition (species occurrence and abundance) of the three communities using univariate and multivariate analyses. Concerning our specific case study, only plant species richness was significantly higher in organic fields (15.7 ± 2.7 species per plot), compared to conventional ones (5.4 ± 2.3 species per plot). Regarding community composition, only pollinators showed a marginally significant difference between conventional and organic fields. Conversely, the effect of specific fields significantly explained differences in composition of all the investigated groups (plants, total insects, and pollinators). The results suggest that, in our case study, the emerged differences in diversity of the investigated communities were mainly attributable to environmental and management factors related to single fields, more than to organic or conventional farming. Such evidence could be partly due to the very local scale of the study, to the heterogeneity of the surveyed fields, and to the reduced number of surveyed fields. Further investigation is therefore needed.

Insect populations decline, particularly in intensively managed agricultural landscapes. Insect communities are influenced by current agricultural practices, which are themselves determined by the economic, political and social frameworks. We highlight these direct and indirect drivers affecting insect communities, raise key research questions and discuss options for action to encourage a transformative change towards an economic, political and social system protecting biodiversity.

Insect populations decline, particularly in intensively managed agricultural landscapes. Insect communities are influenced by current agricultural practices, which are themselves determined by the economic, political and social frameworks. We highlight these direct and indirect drivers affecting insect communities, raise key research questions and discuss options for action to encourage a transformative change towards an economic, political and social system protecting biodiversity. ; peerReviewed

1 Introduction -- 2 Food -- 2.1 Termites as decomposers -- 2.2 Wasps and ants as predators -- 2.3 Sugars as fuel save prey -- 2.4 Seed eaters -- 2.5 Leaf eaters -- 2.6 Pollen eaters -- 3 Foraging by individuals -- 3.1 Foraging strategy -- 3.2 Worker variability -- 4 Foraging in groups -- 4.1 Communication about food -- 4.2 Group slave-raiding -- 4.3 Tunnels and tracks -- 4.4 Nomadic foraging -- 5 Cavity nests and soil mounds -- 5.1 Cavities and burrows -- 5.2 Soil mounds -- 6 Nests of fibre, silk and wax -- 6.1 Mounds of vegetation and tree nests -- 6.2 Combs of cells -- 7 Microclimate -- 7.1 Environmental regulation -- 7.2 Metabolic regulation -- 8 Defence -- 8.1 Painful and paralysing injections -- 8.2 Toxic smears and repellants -- 9 Food processing -- 9.1 Mastication, extraction and regurgitation -- 9.2 Yolk food supplements -- 9.3 Head food glands -- 10 Early population growth -- 10.1 Food distribution -- 10.2 Colony foundation -- 10.3 The growth spurt -- 11 Maturation -- 11.1 Simple models of reproduction -- 11.2 Social control over caste -- 11.3 Males in social Hymenoptera -- 11.4 Maturation in general -- 12 Reproduction -- 12.1 Caste morphogenesis -- 12.2 Copulation and dispersal -- 12.3 Production -- 12.4 Summary -- 13 Evolution of insect societies -- 13.1 Theories of individual selection -- 13.2 Models of these theories -- 13.3 Group selection -- 13.4 Conclusions -- 14 Colonies -- 14.1 The colony barrier -- 14.2 Queen number and species ecology -- 14.3 Queen interaction and queen relatedness -- 15 Comparative ecology of congeneric species -- 15.1 Ant and termite races -- 15.2 Desert ants and termites -- 15.3 Ants and termites in grassland -- 15.4 Forest ants and termites -- 15.5 Wasps and bumblebees -- 15.6 Advanced bees -- 16 Communities -- 16.1 Temperate zone communities in grass and woodland -- 16.2 Desert communities -- 16.3 Tropical rain forest -- 16.4 Conclusions -- 17 Two themes -- 17.1 Plant mutualism -- 17.2 Social organization -- References -- Author index.

Of all the lessons that our crisis-driven epoch of the Anthropocene is teaching us, one of the most profound is this: our very existence on earth is intimately bound with, and indeed dependent upon, the flourishing of all forms of life. This holds particularly true with respect to the complex multispecies encounters between human and insect communities, an area of enquiry which is almost entirely entirely neglected across the social sciences. Regrettably it is only now, faced with the imminent catastrophic decline and extinction of insect and invertebrate populations that our human relationships with these fellow Earthlings are finally being seen as deserving enough to draw the attention of critical scholars, broader activist and policy-making communities alike. In trying to address some of this considerable gap in knowledge and understanding we focus the narrative of insect decline as an impact of colonialism and anti-Indigenous white supremacist policies across the world, enabling insect speciesism to flourish alongside the exploitation of myriad other human and nonhuman creatures. The aim of the paper is to contribute to this emerging literature by articulating a posthuman politics of hope: born of a desire to unpack both the richly embodied personal experiences, and web of relationalities formed through repeated encounters with insects, more fully. Crucially, this entails focusing on ordinary sites and places that will be familiar to most people. It is here, we argue, that to interrogate insect speciesism can teach us important lessons in how we can meaningfully extend our compassion, and broaden our intersectional approaches to social justice, to live more meaningfully and non-violently with insects as fellow Earthlings. The paper argues as long as there is discrimination towards even the smallest creatures of earth, there will also be discrimination towards humans and larger nonhuman animals. To this end the paper pays particular attention to explores the use of everyday language and framing of insects, and how this is used to 'other' them, and thereby trivialise or demonise their existence, such as "it's *just* a bug" or they are all "pests". In doing so we show how this employs the same rhetoric and framing reinforcing broader discrimination patterns of larger nonhuman animals and humans. We evidence this by focusing on the unexpected encounter with other insects in domestic spaces, such as an office desk, and through the multispecies space of 'the allotment'. This discussion then opens up to reflect on two possible posthuman futures, one where insect speciesism is still entrenched and unrepentant; the second a decolonized society where we have aspired to live a more compassionate and non-violent existence amidst these remarkable, brilliant and incredible lives that we owe our very existence on Earth as we know it.

The world's human population has risen exponentially over the last 100 years and is expected to reach nine billion by 2050. Ensuring food security and resource sustainability is of global concern. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization endorses insect farming as an alternative to cattle, pork, sheep, and poultry industries because of their higher food conversion rate. Insect farming requires less arable land, less water, and produces less greenhouse gases than traditional livestock. The practice of eating insects, known as entomophagy, is not a new idea as two billion people around the world include insects in their diets. Unfortunately, insects are not typically considered food in the United States, which means health and safety regulations for insect farming, distribution, and consumption are limited, if not nonexistent. There is a need for the redefinition of insects as a legitimate food in the United States through education, media, and policy. To address this need, we have compiled a toolkit for individuals to promote entomophagy in their own communities. The toolkit includes a resolution, food safety regulation templates, two recipe videos, one promotional video on entomophagy in Montana, two educational videos on environmental and nutritional benefits of eating insects, recipes, and a compilation of infographics. Our target audience is environmentally concerned citizens, as they are the most likely group in the country to be early adopters of entomophagy. Interested citizens can use our toolkit to learn about entomophagy, experiment with recipes, host their own insect tasting event, lobby their local governments to adopt a resolution about integrating entomophagy into their climate actions plans, or work with their local health and safety agencies to adopt regulations legitimizing insects as food. We are in final negotiations with the North American Coalition on Insect Agriculture to host our toolkit online in the public domain.