As I’ve mentioned before, some of the biggest issues facing moths are habitat loss and becoming the unintended target of biocontrol efforts- while we may only be able to influence the latter policy-wise, we have a lot of options when looking at moth habitat and population concerns. When I started looking for groups that work […]
Archive for the ‘Arthropods’ Category
Sharing the night with moths
Careful management for moths
In my last post I mentioned that two of the biggest challenges facing native moth populations are unintended targeting by biological control species and habitat fragmentation. With regard to biological control, the remedy is to be as selective with insect-specific controls as we are with other species, and that’s something to be addressed at a […]
A complicated relationship with moths
In looking at moth conservation research over the last week, it quickly became clear that we have something of a love-hate relationship with these insects, a relationship that is heavily influenced by whether or not a species is native. As might be expected, native species are often in trouble and non-natives often cause trouble for […]
All aflutter
I tend to have ambivalent feelings about insects- love the dung beetles, not so much the termites. I’m also a creature of the day- sun’s up and I’m ready to go, sun’s down and I’m ready for bed. As a result, while I spend a good chunk of time paying attention to the butterflies I […]
Along came a spider conservation program…
In my previous post I said I was going to look into ways to get involved in spider conservation- I’ve done that, and there are definitely ways to get involved, but not in the same numbers that I usually see with other conservation topics. My guess is that spider conservation is both relatively new and […]
Creating a safety net for spiders
As I mentioned in my last post, we are still very much in the beginning stages of understanding spider conservation. At this point, it may be that we can really only speak to general trends, rather than specific conservation situations, but certainly we’ve got a starting point. Spiders are particularly sensitive to vegetative structure, meaning […]
Tracing the thread
When I started looking into spider conservation, I wasn’t sure how much information I would find, but I assumed that there was a growing body of literature. And that is accurate, although I was surprised to see how much of it was about the impact of land management practices on spider communities in general. There […]
A tangled web?
For people who know me, this month’s topic may come as something of a surprise- I am not good with spiders, I do not like them close to me, I get creeped out watching them move. But I’m also trying to be open-minded when it comes to conservation concerns- just because I don’t personally like […]
Helping fireflies glow
Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent some time looking into firefly research and conservation around the world- some aspects of it were considerably more challenging to dig up than others, but I think that I have a much better sense of what it means to be a firefly and the roles that these insects […]
Lights out
In my last post, I mentioned some of the challenges facing firefly populations around the world, including habitat loss and pollution, and this week I wanted to get a better sense of our options for halting population declines and making a human-dominated landscape more firefly-friendly. To be honest, I was kind of hoping to find […]