Advanced Aerial Mapping Unveils England's Hedgerows miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
<p>Scientists have harnessed cutting-edge technology to produce the most comprehensive map of hedgerows across the length and breadth of England. The researchers at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) hope this innovative mapping will guide planting and restoration of these vulnerable habitats to support wildlife and mitigate climate change.</p>
High-tech aerial mapping reveals England's hedgerow landscape phys.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from phys.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Studies have reported widespread declines in terrestrial insect abundances in recent years1–4, but trends in other biodiversity metrics are less clear-cut5–7. Here we examined long-term trends in 923 terrestrial insect assemblages monitored in 106 studies, and found concomitant declines in abundance and species richness. For studies that were resolved to species level (551 sites in 57 studies), we observed a decline in the number of initially abundant species through time, but not in the number of very rare species. At the population level, we found that species that were most abundant at the start of the time series showed the strongest average declines (corrected for regression-to-the-mean effects). Rarer species were, on average, also declining, but these were offset by increases of other species. Our results suggest that the observed decreases in total insect abundance2 can mostly be explained by widespread declines of formerly abundant species. This counters the common narrative that biodiversity loss is mostly characterized by declines of rare species8,9. Although our results suggest that fundamental changes are occurring in insect assemblages, it is important to recognize that they represent only trends from those locations for which sufficient long-term data are available. Nevertheless, given the importance of abundant species in ecosystems10, their general declines are likely to have broad repercussions for food webs and ecosystem functioning. An analysis of more than 500 sites distributed worldwide finds that declines in the abundance of terrestrial insects are attributable mainly to decreases in species that were formerly abundant, rather than being the result of losses of rare species.
Street lighting has detrimental impacts on local insect populations science.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from science.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.