SPECIAL ISSUE: Advances in insect biomonitoring for agriculture and forestry

For the past year, Jordan has been leading the editorial work for a special issue of the journal Agricultural and Forest Entomology, titled “advances in insect biomonitoring for agriculture and forestry”. This has now been finalised and published, containing 11 excellent articles from across the world spanning this broad topic. Check out the full issue here!

Biomonitoring of insects has become increasingly important in the wake of increasingly frequent reports of species loss and the many growing threats to biodiversity. One of the contexts in which this is perhaps most apparent is in our production systems, such as agriculture and forestry, where our need to produce more food and lumber often conflict with our responsibility to preserve biodiversity. Our production systems also often depend on a fine balance of mitigating the number of insect pests present whilst conserving pollinators and other beneficial insects, such as the predators that subsequently eat or otherwise kill pests. This makes agriculture and forestry prime targets for insect biomonitoring, but the scale, accuracy and precision required to do this effectively has been lacking. Traditional monitoring methods are laborious and often error-prone, demanding advances in how and when we monitor these insect populations.

Across this special issue, articles propose and demonstrate the application of cutting-edge technologies and scientific practice to the monitoring of insects in production systems. From the integration of artificial intelligence and high-throughout DNA sequencing to the application of camera trapping and semiochemical analysis, it’s clear that biomonitoring is rapidly advancing on many fronts simultaneously. Alongside this technological integration, conceptual advances are evidenced, such as the extension of our monitoring periods across the full year, integrating different methods for cross-validation and considering the sensory profile of insect traps. It is evident that the most successful monitoring schemes of the future will be multifaceted, using emerging technologies alongside traditional approaches to great effect.

These articles within the special issue include Ben’s excellent review of the application of DNA metabarcoding to agricultural insect biomonitoring and the paper that Jordan led on extending biomonitoring of biocontrol interactions across the annual cycle. Jordan also wrote an editorial with fellow editor Allan Watt which summarises the papers included in the special issue and provides a synthesis on the topic more broadly based on these articles. Ultimately, this provided an opportunity to consider and discuss the various advances, both underway and upcoming, which are likely to change how we monitor insects in production systems in the coming years. Check out the editorial and the wider special issue to explore this for yourself!

It is during this period of editing the special issue that Jordan took up his Editor-in-Chief position for Agricultural and Forest Entomology and he is sure there are many more exciting things to come through the journal very soon.