Understanding and predicting the consequences of pollinator and predatory insect declines for global agriculture

Insects are reported to be in rapid decline worldwide, driven principally by changes in land use and climatic conditions. At the same time, insects provide many important services that benefit agriculture, including pollination and control of crop pests. We still have an incomplete understanding of how changes in land use and climate drive insect declines worldwide, however, and consequently where insect biodiversity is most at risk. This project will investigate how changes in land use and climate drive changes in the biodiversity of pollinators and pest-predators by collating a global database on the identity of pollinating and pest-controlling species to be used in concert with global abundance data on the distribution of biodiversity along both climate and land-use gradients. The project will, furthermore, identify where the most pronounced declines in the diversity of pollinators and pest-controllers overlap with agriculturally important areas, and which regions of the world are thus at risk of food shortages due to degradation in ecosystem services. This assessment will be made both at the current time as well as modelled into the future with respect to RCP scenarios of climate and land-use change.