(1st Place) Insects and protected areas: Biomass trends and the impacts of anthropogenic threats

Rapid global declines in insect biomass and diversity are threatening essential ecological functions and many ecosystem services that humans rely on. This global decline is a multifaceted dilemma that is impacted by land-use change, the introduction of alien species, and climate change. Protected areas act as important habitat refugia for insects in highly human-affected landscapes and are important for their long-term conservation with the increasing impacts of anthropogenic threats. In the early 1990s, insects were collected using malaise traps in various protected areas within the Long Point World Biosphere Reserve. To assess the impacts of anthropogenic threats such as climate change and landscape changes on insects in protected areas, this sampling was replicated from 2021 – 2023 for a comparative analysis of changes in insect biomass between the two time periods. Biomass of insects showed varying trends between the two time periods. Certain taxa such as Trichoptera and Diptera showed increases in insect biomass between the two periods, whereas taxa like Lepidoptera showed a decline in biomass. Taxa that showed increases in biomass were found to be those with aquatic life stages, while those that showed declines were mainly terrestrial taxa. Increased environmental stressors, mainly related to vegetation and climate, have been shown to be the drivers of these observed changes in biomass. The impacts of human activity outside the confines of these protected areas, are still impacting insect biodiversity within them and is driving their decline.