Alien Species and Insect Conservation

About this book

This overview of the roles of alien species in insect conservation brings together information, evidence and examples from many parts of the world to illustrate their impacts (often severe, but in many cases poorly understood and unpredictable) as one of the primary drivers of species declines, ecological changes and biotic homogenisation. Both accidental and deliberate movements of species are involved, with alien invasive plants and insects the major groups of concern for their influences on native insects and their environments. Risk assessments, stimulated largely through fears of non-target impacts of classical biological control agents introduced for pest management, have provided valuable lessons for wider conservation biology. They emphasise the needs for effective biosecurity, risk avoidance and minimisation, and evaluation and management of alien invasive species as both major components of many insect species conservation programmes and harbingers of change in invaded communities. The spread of highly adaptable ecological generalist invasive species, which are commonly difficult to detect or monitor, can be linked to declines and losses of numerous localised ecologically specialised insects and disruptions to intricate ecological interactions and functions, and create novel interactions with far-reaching consequences for the receiving environments. Understanding invasion processes and predicting impacts of alien species on susceptible native insects is an important theme in practical insect conservation.

Contents

1. The significance of alien species to insect conservation
1.1 Introduction: alien species in insect conservation
1.2 Semantics and understanding
1.3 References

2. The diversity and impacts of alien species
2.1 Introduction: the diversity of alien species
2.2 Alien species in invaded ecosystems
2.3 References

3. The stages of invasion
3.1 Introduction: becoming an invasive alien species
3.2 The invasion sequence
3.3 References

4. The ecological and evolutionary consequences of alien invasive species
4.1 Introduction: new associations and new impacts
4.2 Novel trophic associations
4.3 Wider ecological impacts
4.4 Ecological traps
4.5 Ecological specialisation
4.6 Functional equivalence
4.7 Clarifying and defining impacts
4.8 References

5. Alien plants and insect conservation
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Environmental weeds
5.3 Alien plants as hosts for native insect herbivores
5.4 Enemy release
5.5 Host plant shifts
5.6 References

6. Alien insects and insect conservation
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Generalist predators
6.3 Classical biological control
6.4 Neoclassical biological control
6.5 New association biological control
6.6 Conservation biological control
6.7 Some major taxonomic focal groups
6.8 References

7. Other alien invertebrates
7.1 Introduction: an overview
7.2 References

8. Alien vertebrates and insect conservation
8.1 Introduction: an overview
8.2 References

9. Countering impacts of alien species
9.1 Introduction: assessing management need
9.2 Eradication
9.3 References

10. Invasions and insect conservation
10.1 Introduction: insects in the Anthropocene
10.2 Climate change
10.3 Moving insects deliberately
10.4 Information
10.5 Concluding comment
10.6 References

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