Re: Request for collaborators on Insect Abundance project

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Marcepstein
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Joined: Thu Oct 13, 2022 8:39 pm
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Re: Request for collaborators on Insect Abundance project

Post by Marcepstein »

Hi all,

I still follow a wetland management forum that has various biological interest. I may have missed the copied email below from Dr. Peter Dunn, but I just emailed him and he advises the project is ongoing and is still interested anyone that might be interested in assisting. Some of you may already be participating.

He sent me an abstract of a paper he has submitted to Ecology for publication and a pdf of the protocol (attached). If you might be interested, I suggest you contact Dr. Dunn directly at pdunn@uwm.edu .

Well, I tried to attach them but not letting me. Ive copied the abstract below FYI ... Im sure Dr. Dunn will send the protocol and introduction to you if interested.

Regards,
Marc

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Abstract
Predictions of how plants and animals will respond to climate change often assume that their response to temperature is consistent within taxa and across large geographic regions. However, there is little empirical evidence testing these assumptions at the scale of continents. Here, we examine the biomass of insects in relation to temperature and time of season at 96 sites in grassy habitats across North America (N = 1041 samples). We sampled insect biomass with Malaise traps over three years (2019-2021) and found strong regional differences in the phenology of insects and their response to temperature, even within the same taxonomic group, habitat type and time of season. At a smaller scale, insect biomass at different traps operating on the same days was correlated up to about 75 km apart. Large-scale geographic and phenological variation in insect abundance has not been studied well, and it is a major source of controversy in previous analyses of insect declines that have aggregated studies from different locations and time periods. Our study illustrates that large-scale predictions about changes in insect abundance, and their causes, will need to incorporate regional and taxonomic differences in the response to temperature.


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From: Peter O Dunn <pdunn@uwm.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2020 9:40 AM
To: Alan D Afton <aafton@lsu.edu>
Subject: Request for collaborators on Insect Abundance project

Hi Al
Could you please post this request on your list-serve? It’s a request for assistance with a continent-wide insect sampling project. It’s not strictly waterfowl related, but the impetus is a concern about declining food abundance for birds.
Thanks, Peter

Dear Colleagues

As you know, a growing number of studies have found declines of insects and, as a consequence, there is concern among ornithologists that this might reduce the food supply of birds and be related to some population declines. Most of these studies of insects have been in Europe; we have very little data to support this hypothesis in North America, particularly at a large geographic scale.
Thus, I am inviting you to join our collaborative network studying insect abundance. We have researchers at 15 sites monitoring insect abundance using Malaise traps, but there is always room for more sites. The sites stretch from New Brunswick to Alaska and down to North Carolina. A handful of sites have been studying insect abundance for 20+ years, but they have been using different methods. This study aims to standardize collection methods so we can directly compare abundance of insects in different areas and over time.
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.
So far we only have one year of data from our network of Malaise traps, but contrary to some suggestions, insect abundance does not appear to be lower in areas of the northeast US and Canada where, for example, there have been the largest declines in aerial insectivores. Our long-term data sets from four sites with 20+ years of data also do not show any strong declines. But this is far from settled, and we would like to encourage others to join the network of researchers (and hopefully more of the public) studying insect declines.
If you want to get involved, I can send more info to you directly. Briefly, we are looking for individuals that are willing to trap insects with Malaise traps in open areas (>20 m from trees) during at least three periods (each 72 hrs long) during May and June. The three periods are standardized by phenological measures, such as last frost date.
We plan to publish all of our insect data (from 2-3 years) from as many sites as possible to get a broad picture of insect abundance throughout the continent. Everyone contributing data would be an author and the order of authors would be decided by their level of contribution.
Please forward this to anyone you think might be interested. If you are interested, please email me (pdunn@uwm.edu) and then we can go from there.

Thanks, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Peter Dunn and Linda Whittingham
Dept of Biological Sciences, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
http://people.uwm.edu/pdunn/

Effects of Climate Change on Birds 2e (Dunn and Møller)
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198824275.do

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