Recent reports on substantial arthropod declines have raised considerable concerns. The loss of diversity and abundance of insects has negative impacts on various ecosystem functions, as insects play a central role as pollinators, predatory beneficial insects and parasitoids of pests, and as herbivores. Furthermore, they are an important food source for other invertebrates, but also for birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians.
Environmental changes in agricultural landscapes potentially strongly affect insects. FiBL examines important beneficial insects in different agricultural systems and compares data from the mid nineties with today’s status. The data obtained allow an assessment of biodiversity in relation to different intensive cropping systems.
Longterm data from different habitats across Switzerland will be used by an initiative between the research institutes Agroscope, WSL (Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research), Vogelwarte Sempach and info fauna (CSCF) to gain insights on the status and the changes of insect communities and to identify the most important threats.
