Tim New
Cambridge University Press, New York
2009; 256 pages
ISBN: 978-0-521-73276-5
Price: $69 (softcover)

 

The Xerces blue butterfly, Antioch katydid, Tobias’ caddisfly, Robert’s alloperlan stonefly, Colorado burrowing mayfly, and Rocky Mountain grasshopper all were driven extinct by humans, and may foreshadow the fate of many of the world’s endangered insects. With almost 1 million described species, insects eclipse all other forms of animal life on Earth, not only in sheer numbers, diversity, and biomass, but also in their importance to functioning ecosystems. However, human-induced changes to the natural environment endanger vast numbers of these organisms, threatening them and the vital services they provide.

Because of their sheer diversity, more insect species are at risk than any other group (Black and Vaughan 2009).  In fact, the Natural Heritage Program lists 1,697 insects in the U.S. as either critically imperiled or imperiled. Tim New’s Insect Species Conservation was written with these species in mind.

During the past two decades, I have developed recovery plans and strategies, been engaged in population studies, and worked with land managers across North America on insect conservation. Upon first glance, I thought this book would be a good reference, but I had no idea how much new information I could take away. I can simply say that Insect Species Conservation will be a resource I will turn to time and time again. This publication is so rich with pertinent information that once I picked it up, I did not want to put it down.

This book will be useful to a variety of audiences, from students studying entomology and conservation to any person working to manage land with at-risk species. Insect Species Conservation is not written for the lay audience and includes some complex topics and language. However, professionals that have worked on species conservation and readers with some understanding of ecology and entomology will be best able to understand and draw from this text.

Insect Species Conservation draws widely from conservation biology, ecology, entomology, and policy to present a comprehensive overview of how to conserve insect species. This incredibly well-cited volume includes chapters that lead the reader through almost every aspect of insect species conservation, from understanding needs and priorities to planning for conservation and monitoring insect populations. New gives good treatment to the many threats that insects face. The book concludes with a chapter on constructing an insect management plan.

Many of the ideas are multifaceted, but New does an excellent job of keeping these complex ideas understandable. The well-designed contents pages allow for easy navigation and the helpful index makes this volume a wonderful reference for anyone working on or interested in insect species conservation.

This book does have one intentional limitation.  As New points out in the preface, the book is designed to help conserve individual at-risk insect species. There has been some debate over whether we should move to an ecosystem approach for insects (Polhemus 1993, Strayer 2004). Strayer (2004) noted that an individual species approach will be woefully inadequate for freshwater invertebrates because too many are in danger and we know too little about them. One hurdle to the ecosystem approach is that although many classifications of ecosystems have been suggested, there is no universally accepted standard for identifying which ecosystems to prioritize (Losos 1993). By comparison, the species definition is widely accepted and easily determined. Even if ecosystems were well defined, translating biodiversity into the regulatory context can be plagued with difficulty (Dudley 1992). Regardless of this debate, species conservation is a very important aspect of insect conservation and a general consensus exists among conservation biologists that conservation measures should integrate protection on several levels, including genes, species, and ecosystems (Losos, 1993).

This text should be required reading for all students of entomology and anyone who works to manage landscapes with at-risk species.  Most insects are not pests, and most provide for the well-being of the planet.  Many are also declining and at risk. It is not just polar bears and wolves that need conservation attention but the beetles, bees, and even flies that often go unnoticed all around us.  For all those working on conservation and land management, Tim New’s Insect Species Conservation is an essential resource.

 

Literature cited

Black, S.H. and M. Vaughan. 2009.Endangered Insects. In Encyclopedia of Insects (Eds. Resh, V.H. and Carde, R.). Academic Press, San Diego, CA.

Dudley, J. P. 1992.Rejoiner to Rohlf and O’Connell: Biodiversity as a regulatory criterion.Conservation Biology6: 587-589.

Losos, E. 1993.The future of the U.S. endangered species act. Trends in Ecology & Evolution8: 332-336.

NatureServe 2010.NatureServe Explorer: An online encyclopedia of life [web application]. Version 7.0. http://www.natureserve.org/explorer

Polhemus, D. A. 1993. Conservation of aquatic insects: Worldwide crisis or localized threats? American Zoologist 33: 588-598.

Strayer, D. 2004.Fall. The crisis for freshwater invertebrates. Wings. Essays on Invertebrate Conservation27: 6-11.

 

Scott Hoffman Black
Xerces Society for
Invertebrate Conservation
4828 SE Hawthorne Boulevard
Portland, OR 97215 USA
E-mail: sblack@xerces.org

American Entomologist
Vol. 57, No.2, Summer 2011