Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Entomology
Is turning food waste into insect feed an uphill climb? A review of persistent challenges
Published: 2024-04-22
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Entomology, Food Science, Technology and Innovation
One major hurdle for our current food system is the enormous amount of food that goes to waste. Insect farming has been proposed as a potential solution, offering one way to turn waste into agricultural resources such as livestock and aquaculture feed. In this article, we review the types of materials currently used to raise insects at commercial scales, and we examine whether those materials [...]
Not All Mass Mortality Events are Equal
Published: 2024-03-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Population Biology
Mass Mortality Events (MMEs) are defined as novel events involving many individuals dying in a relatively short period of time. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in MMEs due to their perceived increase in frequency. Current definitions are subjective and categorize mortalities varying in magnitude and frequency together. Within this manuscript, Multiple Mortality Events is a [...]
Social cues and habitat structure influence the behavior of a non-social insect
Published: 2024-03-05
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences
Habitat fragmentation and loss is a known threat to biodiversity. Their combined effect leaves organisms in small isolated patches of habitat, contributing to the current biodiversity crisis. The first response of animals to environmental change is typically behavioral. Beyond the physical elements of the environment, the "social landscape" shapes the spatial distribution of the habitats [...]
Tempo and mode of diapause evolution in butterflies
Published: 2024-02-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Quantifying the tempo and mode via modern phylogenetic comparative methods can provide insights into how selection and constraints shape trait evolution. Here we elucidate the evolution of diapause, a complex and key trait that allows temporal escape from unfavorable conditions in many insects, including our model system, butterflies. Using a thorough literature survey, we first scored the [...]
Leveraging Biodiversity Net Gain to address invertebrate declines in England
Published: 2024-02-10
Subjects: Biodiversity, Entomology
Meeting ambitions such as the Global Biodiversity Framework 2030 targets will require multiple conservation mechanisms that benefit the widest possible range of habitats and species. Using England as a case study, here we evaluate the likely impact of a novel and ambitious ecological compensation policy, Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), on terrestrial insects, spiders, and other arthropods [...]
Thresholds and prediction models to support the sustainable management of herbivorous insects in wheat. A review
Published: 2024-01-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Entomology
daily calorific intake for countries across the globe. Wheat crops are attacked by a diverse range of herbivorous invertebrates (pests) that cause significant yield loss. It is anticipated that yield loss caused by pests will increase in response to a changing climate. Currently, these pests are primarily controlled using pesticides, however there is an increased need for more sustainable pest [...]
Solving the “small outbreak problem” in climate epidemiology
Published: 2024-01-04
Subjects: Climate, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitic Diseases, Public Health, Virus Diseases
Climate change can cause outbreaks of infectious diseases in unfamiliar locations — but how do we know which unusual outbreaks are the result of climate change? Scientists often hesitate to guess, leaving the task to journalists or the public. All of these audiences would benefit from a clear and consistent framework for thinking about causality, especially in situations where outbreaks are too [...]
Inferring the seasonal dynamics and abundance of an invasive species using a spatio-temporal stacked machine learning model
Published: 2023-12-22
Subjects: Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Public Health, Virus Diseases
Various modelling techniques are available to understand the temporal and spatial variations of the phenology of species. Scientists often rely on correlative models, which establish a statistical relationship between a response variable (such as species abundance or presence-absence) and a set of predominantly abiotic covariates. The modelling approach choice, i.e. the algorithm, is a crucial [...]
VectAbundance: a spatio-temporal database of vector observations
Published: 2023-12-22
Subjects: Entomology, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Life Sciences, Zoology
Modelling approaches play a crucial role in supporting local public health agencies by estimating and forecasting vector abundance and seasonality. However, the reliability of these models is contingent on the availability of standardized, high-quality data. Addressing this need, our study focuses on collecting and harmonizing egg count observations of Aedes albopictus, obtained through ovitraps [...]
Ecosystem functions and services provided by dung beetles: a global meta-analysis
Published: 2023-12-19
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences
Dung beetles are known to carry out a range of ecosystem functions such as secondary seed dispersal, bioturbation, nutrient cycling, plant growth, pest and parasite control, and trophic regulation, many of which support key ecosystem services. Despite the globally purported significance of this group of insects for ecosystem functioning, there has been no quantitative synthesis to establish the [...]
How does vector diversity influence the transmission efficiency of barley yellow dwarf virus? Perspectives from a review
Published: 2023-12-06
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Entomology, Plant Pathology
Cereals are some of the most important global crops that contribute directly and indirectly to the production of food for human consumption. Cereal aphids can cause significant damage to wheat, barley, and oats, particularly via the transmission of plant viruses that cause devastating plant diseases, such as yellow dwarf disease. Yellow dwarf disease is caused by two related viruses within the [...]
Forecasting insect dynamics in a changing world
Published: 2023-11-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology
Predicting how insects will respond to stressors through time is difficult because of the diversity of insects, environments, and approaches used to monitor and model. Forecasting models take correlative/statistical, mechanistic models, and integrated forms; in some cases, temporal processes can be inferred from spatial models. Because of heterogeneity associated with broad community [...]
Sharing the burden: Cabbage stem flea beetle pest pressure and crop damage are lower in rapeseed fields surrounded by other rapeseed crops
Published: 2023-11-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The cabbage stem flea beetle (Psylliodes chrysocephala) is a significant pest of rapeseed (Brassica napus). Feeding by adult P. chrysocephala can cause severe leaf damage and larval infestation can reduce stem strength, both of which impact crop growth and development, causing substantial yield losses and economic damage. The structure of the agricultural landscape can regulate herbivorous pest [...]
Warming summer temperatures are rapidly restructuring North American bumble bee communities
Published: 2023-08-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
A rapidly warming climate is a primary force driving changes in biodiversity worldwide. The impact of warming temperatures on insect communities is of particular interest given their importance for ecosystem function and service provision and the uncertainty around whether insect communities can keep pace with the rate of increasing temperatures. We use a long-term dataset on bumble bee species [...]
Lipid Metabolism in Parasitoids and Parasitized Hosts
Published: 2023-06-30
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Physiology
Parasitoids have an exceptional lifestyle where juvenile development is spent on or in a single host insect, but the adults are free-living. Unlike parasites, parasitoids always kill their host. How parasitoids use such a limiting resource, particularly lipids, is important for their chances to survive and reproduce. In part 1, we describe the parasitoid lifestyle, including typical developmental [...]