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27 - Flies, beetles and bees, wasps and ants (Diptera, Coleoptera and aculeate Hymenoptera)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

By
Alan Stubbs
Edited by
Norman Maclean
Norman Maclean
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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Summary

Summary

These large insect groups have a huge range of lifestyles, ecological niches and habitats. Their fate over the last 50 years has been a response to the many well-documented environmental changes, but these insects have also responded to more subtle ecological factors which are less obvious. Large declines in whole assemblages of species have gone largely unreported in conservation reviews, and many species fall into the modern definition of Species of Conservation Concern. An important message is that these insect groups have declined even on many nature reserves, since their requirements are often not met by generalised habitat management. The term Favourable Conservation Status for SSSIs can readily misrepresent the status of the invertebrate fauna, a key issue for the future. In covering such a large subject, examples can only give a partial picture, and issues raised are to varying degrees applicable to more than one group of insects.

Introduction

In Britain and Ireland, these groups of insects between them include about 11 500 species: 7000 flies (Diptera), 4000 beetles (Coleoptera) and some 500 aculeate Hymenoptera. They cover a huge range of lifestyles and ecological niches, major components of the ecological web of life. Apart from larvae eating plants and adults being pollinators, life histories can be dependent on rotting wood, decaying vegetation, carrion, mud and peat, soil, commensalism, parasitism (including parasitic ‘cuckoo’ types) and blood-sucking, and fly species can occur in all environments, on land, in fresh water and at the marine fringe.

Type
Chapter
Information
Silent Summer
The State of Wildlife in Britain and Ireland
 , pp. 495 - 511
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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References

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