Monitoring Biodiversity: Measuring Long-term Changes in Insect Abundance

摘要

In addition to preserving threatened individual species, maintaining biodiversity is a predominant focus of modern conservation biology (Dobson, 2005). Measuring changes in abundance for species-centric conservation usually involves small populationsin limited areas, often associated with specific resources. Monitoring abundance of threatened species is of key importance to evaluating the progress of conservation activities (Hellmann et at., 2003). In conserving biodiversity measuring changes in abundance of multiple species is more demanding (Balmford et al., 2005; Buckland et al., 2005). Biodiversity indices, comprising long-term trend data for many species, are valuable tools for biodiversity monitoring (e.g. Gregory et al., 2005; Loh et al., 2005). However, the development of such indices for insects, which make up the majority of terrestrial species, is hindered by the rarity of long-term abundance trends across multiple species (Loh et al., 2005).