Insect Diversity Conservation

Reviewing the background and ethics of insect conservation as well as current threats to insect diversity, this book explains the reasoning behind, and the techniques used, to maintain and protect insect diversity. Insect conservation has recently become a significant component of conservation biology because insects make up such a large proportion of total species numbers and biomass.

This groundbreaking book is a contemporary global synthesis of the rapidly developing and important field of insect conservation biology. Insects play important roles in terrestrial ecological processes and in maintaining the world as we know it. They present particular conservation challenges, especially as a quarter face extinction within the next few decades. This textbook addresses the ethical foundation of insect conservation, and asks why should we concern ourselves with conservation of a butterfly, beetle or bug? The success of insects and their diversity, which have survived glaciers, is now facing a more formidable obstacle: the meteoric impact of humans. After addressing threats, from invasive alien plants to climate change, the book explores ways insects and their habitats are prioritised, mapped, monitored and conserved. Landscape and species approaches are considered. This book is for undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers and managers in conservation biology or entomology, and the wider biological and environmental sciences.

Preface; Part I. The Need for Insect Diversity Conservation: 1. Ethical foundation for insect conservation; 2. The special case of insects in conservation biology; 3. Insects and the conservation of ecosystem processes; Part II. Insects and the Changing World: 4. Degradation and fragmentation of ecosystems; 5. Responses by insects to the changing land mosaic; 6. Threats from invasive aliens, biological control, and genetic engineering; 7. Global climate change and synergistic impacts; Part III. Conserving and Managing Insect Diversity: 8. Methods, approaches, and prioritization criteria; 9. Mapping, inventorying, and monitoring; 10. Managing for insect diversity; 11. Restoration of insect diversity; 12. Conventions and social issues in insect diversity conservation; References; Index.

Insects dominate and maintain the world around us. Yet their diversity and future survival is being challenged by the impact of humans. This book examines the ethical foundation of why we should conserve insects and their habitats, it addresses the threats they face, and proposes ways to maintain insect diversity.

Michael Samways is Professor of Entomology in the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He is internationally known as a conservation biologist and policy advisor.