Insect species and genetic variety are a major component of terrestrial biodiversity, yet currently insect species and polymorphisms are undergoing a major extinction spasm. Many insects are remarkably vagile, while many are not, making them vulnerable to local, regional and even global extinction. These extinctions are the result of extensive and intensive anthropogenic landscape disturbance.
We know very little of how these landscape changes effect the insect fauna. Nevertheless, some recent findings have been surprising, mostly because insects behaviourally respond to changes in landscape patterning in ways we might not have predicted. This means that conservation of biodiversity cannot just be done intuitively, but requires a knowledge base of insect movement behaviour as well as ecology.
The ESA 2001 Annual Meeting - 2001: An Entomological Odyssey of ESA