Noriegab, T. E-mail address: tschowalter agcenter. Abstract Natural ecosystems provide a variety of services on which humans, and other organisms, depend for survival and well-being. Many of these disservices are induced by management practices such as deforestation and concentration of agricultural crops.
Insects affect ecosystem services in a variety of ways, positively and negatively. The papers in this special issue are focused on managing insects and ecosystems, and their interactions, in ways that ensure sustainability of ecosystem services and that minimize induction of disservices. Keywords: provisioning service, cultural service, supporting service, regulating service, ecosystem service, ecosystem disservice, pollination, biological control, primary productivity, decomposition.
Schowalter and T. Noriega, J. Hortal and A. Natural ecosystems provide a variety of services on which humans, and other organisms, depend for survival and well-being. These ecosystem services can be categorized as provisioning production of food, fiber, water and other resources , cultural non-material benefits, such as recreation, spiritual and other aesthetic values , supporting primary production, pollination, decomposition and soil formation necessary for resource production and regulating biological control and other feedback mechanisms that maintain relatively consistent delivery of services Millennium Ecosystem Assessment ; Carpenter et al.
Minimizing disservices has been the focus of entomological research and extension programs. Ironically, however, many of these disservices are exacerbated by anthropogenic destabilization of food webs and of ecosystem structures and processes that mitigate effects of floods, storms and other weather events Dobson et al.
Managing insects and ecosystems, and their interactions, in ways that ensure sustainability of ecosystem services and minimize induction of disservices is not optional, but rather is critical to human survival. The consequences of undermining the sustainable delivery of ecosystem services include famine, water shortages, threats to human health and economic disruption as supply and demand become decoupled e. Whitmee et al.
Insects deserve particular attention because they are our greatest competitors for resources and vectors of human and livestock diseases, but also major regulators of ecosystem processes that sustain the delivery of services Schowalter , Attention to insect contributions to ecosystem services has increased rapidly in recent years.
However, Noriega et al. Provisioning services Ecosystems are the source of all food, fresh water, fiber and biofuels, and many medical and industrial resources for humans. Short-term losses in production of plant or livestock resources are obvious, and their economic value is easily measured and used to develop economic thresholds for pest control.
However, insects provide critical resources for fish and wildlife production, and insects themselves provide important products for human use. Insects or their products are valuable food resources in many cultures. Honey has been among the most important commercial trade products for millennia Crane An early cave painting at Altamira in Spain from about 15, years ago apparently represents honey collectors, and Mesolithic rock art from Spain, South Africa and India record honey hunting, often depicting use of ladders to climb trees or rock faces and using smoke to drive out bees Dams ; Crane Because insects invest less energy in maintenance than do homeothermic vertebrates, insects produce protein much more efficiently than livestock van Huis About edible insect species are consumed by ethnic groups in countries MacEvilly In some cultures, maintenance of edible insect populations represents a primary ecosystem management goal.
Ecosystems are valued sources of fresh water, and adequate water supply often is the primary management goal for municipal watersheds. Herbivorous insects reduce canopy cover and increase the volume of precipitation reaching the ground and flowing into streams. Changes in water yield and quality resulting from insect activity Lovett et al. A number of insect species provide widely-used medical or industrial products Cherniack ; Ratcliffe et al.
Blow fly, Lucilia spp. Their medical value lies in their selective feeding on necrotic tissue, leaving clean tissue when they depart. Insects also are a source of several important industrial products, especially silk and red dye. Silkworms, Bombyx mori Lepidoptera: Bombycidae , are the primary source of commercial silk.
Insects have been used as religious symbols or cultural icons for millennia. Insects often are the objects of tourist destinations. Many people travel to visit overwintering aggregations of monarch butterflies, Danaus plexippus Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae , in Mexico and related species in tropical Asia. Butterfly houses also are popular in many areas Veltman , offering tourists opportunities to enjoy representative butterflies from around the world.
Supporting services Supporting services include ecosystem processes necessary for delivery of provisioning or cultural services, e. Insects are integral components of ecosystems and often provide important feedbacks and indirect effects that influence ecosystem processes in complementary ways. Pollination services are among the most widely recognized roles of insects and have generated the greatest attention to positive roles of insects.
Klein, Steffan-Dewenter and Tscharntke demonstrated that fruit set of highland coffee increased with increasing bee diversity. Consequently, pollination services have recognized monetary value. Declining pollinator abundance in many areas Biesmeijer et al. Arthropods also are instrumental in the development of soil structure and fertility. Termites and dung beetles, in particular, provide a major agricultural service by removing and burying livestock dung, thereby preventing fouling of pasture forage by dung accumulation, increasing carbon and water storage in soil, reducing nitrogen loss via erosion and volatilization and reducing livestock losses due to hematophagous flies Doube in this issue.
Regulating services Regulating services include the various feedbacks that minimize variation in primary production, biogeochemical fluxes, climate, etc. These feedback mechanisms are critical to stabilizing population sizes, species interactions and nutrient fluxes that support community and ecosystem processes.
Although herbivory generally is not viewed in a positive way, populations of native herbivores regulate primary production in a density- dependent manner, maintaining primary production near carrying capacity. Herbivore diversity and herbivory are positively related to plant diversity Ebeling et al.
However, outbreaks are most likely when environmental changes, especially changes in host plant density or stress, create favorable conditions for herbivore population growth.
Biological control is an important regulatory service that typically is undervalued until lost. Karp et al. Unmanipulated ecosystems regulate abundances of pathogen and vector species through various food web interactions and habitat conditions. For example, the complex interactions that limit tick abundance and spread of Lyme disease depend on the diversity of small mammal species Dobson et al.
Similarly, bird species diversity limits the abundance of reservoir hosts for West Nile Virus and reduces the incidence of human cases Allan et al.
Keesing, Holt and Ostfeld and Gottdenker, Streicker, Faust and Carroll reviewed studies of the relationship between biodiversity and risk of human diseases. Both groups concluded that biodiversity is critical to maintaining low risk of human diseases, primarily through a dilution effect of disease transmission into poor hosts.
Ecosystem disservices Humans have battled disservices, such as crop pests and diseases, for millennia. However, crop losses to pests typically reflect resource concentration in agricultural and managed forests that favor population growth and spread by favored species, along with anthropogenic transportation of invasive species across natural barriers, and stable environmental conditions and abundant resources in human habitations Schowalter De Castro et al.
About half of the species Species that vector multiple human pathogens were all favored by deforestation. This analysis demonstrated that the net effect of deforestation is increased abundances of mosquitoes that serve as vectors of human disease and reduced abundances of non- vectors species. Whereas eradication of mosquitoes might seem to be an attractive goal, mosquitoes are the base of a food web that supports a variety of predaceous invertebrates and vertebrates, including fish, birds and mammals.
The consequences of disrupting food webs are difficult to predict, but could have undesirable effects on other services, such as biological control of other pests Schowalter Obviously, finding the balance between sustaining delivery of ecosystem services and minimizing disservices will be the key to our survival Tscharntke et al.
Insects as tools Given their ability to substantially affect ecosystem services, insects may provide solutions to some environmental issues. These examples suggest opportunities for additional applications of insect roles to promote sustainability of ecosystem services. Conclusion Insects contribute to ecosystem services in significant ways, in some cases mitigating their effects as pests.
This special issue provides a comprehensive overview of provisioning, cultural, supporting and regulating ecosystem services provided by insects. In addition, we address ecosystem disservices, which can be an important antipode of insect services.
The flows of services and disservices are often driven by local and landscape management. Reponses to abiotic conditions: I. Physical template; II. Surviving variable abiotic conditions; III. Factors affecting dispersal behavior; IV. Responses to anthropogenic changes.
Resource acquisition: I. Resource quality; II. This book addresses aspects of insect-environment interactions and reviews multiple levels of ecological hierarchy. Topics include: ecology of individual, population and community ecosystems; relationship of insect ecology to environmental change; metapopulation dynamics to ecosystem structure and function; the ability of insect functional groups to affect ecosystem and global processes such. Combining breadth of coverage with detail, this logical and cohesive introduction to insect ecology couples concepts with a broad range of examples and practical applications.
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Resource budget 3. Allocation of assimilated resources 4. Efficiency of resource use 5. Population structure 3. Population Processes 4. Life history characteristics 5.
Parameter estimation 6. Summary Chapter 6: Population Dynamics Abstract 1. Population fluctuation 3. Factors affecting population size 4. Models of population change 5. Summary Chapter 7: Biogeography Abstract 1. Geographic distribution 3. Spatial dynamics of populations 4.
Habitat connectivity 5. Anthropogenic effects on spatial dynamics 6. Models of spatial dynamics 7. Direct interactions 3. Indirect effects 4. Factors affecting interactions 5. Consequences of interactions 6.
Summary Chapter 9: Community Structure Abstract 1. Approaches to describing communities 3. Patterns of community structure 4. Determinants of community structure 5. Summary Chapter Community Dynamics Abstract 1. Short-term change in community structure 3. Successional change in community structure 4. Paleoecology 5. Diversity versus stability 6. Ecosystem structure 3.
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