The study of how insects interact with the surrounding environment
A giant water bug attacking a fish
Insect ecology is the interaction of insects, individually or as a community, with the surrounding environment or ecosystem.[1]
Insects play significant roles in the ecology of the world due to their vast diversity of form, function and lifestyle; their considerable biomass; and their interaction with plant life, other organisms and the environment. Since they are the major contributor to biodiversity in the majority of habitats, except in the sea, they accordingly play a variety of extremely important ecological roles in the many functions of an ecosystem. Taking the case of nutrient recycling, insects contribute to this vital function by degrading or consuming leaf litter, wood, carrion and dung and by dispersal of fungi.
Insects form an important part of the food chain, especially for entomophagous vertebrates such as many mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles. Insects play an important role in maintaining community structure and composition; in the case of animals by transmission of diseases, predation and parasitism, and in the case of plants, through phytophagy and by plant propagation through pollination and seed dispersal.[2] From an anthropocentric point of view, insects compete with humans; they consume as much as 10% of the food produced by man and infect one in six humans with a pathogen.[3]
^Schowalter, Timothy Duane (2006). Insect ecology: an ecosystem approach (2(illustrated) ed.). Academic Press. p. 572. ISBN 978-0-12-088772-9. Retrieved 17 July 2010.
^Gullan, P.J.; Cranston, P.S. (2005). The insects: an outline of entomology (3 (illustrated, revised) ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. p. 505. ISBN 978-1-4051-1113-3. Retrieved 17 Jul 2010.
^Speight, Martin R.; Hunter, Mark D.; Watt, Allan D. (1999). Ecology of insects: concepts and applications (4(Illustrated) ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. p. 350. ISBN 978-0-86542-745-7. Retrieved 2010-07-24.
Insectecology is the interaction of insects, individually or as a community, with the surrounding environment or ecosystem. Insects play significant roles...
Insect winter ecology describes the overwinter survival strategies of insects, which are in many respects more similar to those of plants than to many...
2010s, reports emerged about the widespread decline in insect populations across multiple insect orders. The reported severity shocked many observers,...
Cranston 2005, pp. 65–68. Chown, S. L.; Nicholson, S. W. (2004). Insect Physiological Ecology. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-851549-4. Richard...
partitioning of social insects Crespi, Bernard J.; Yanega, Douglas (1995). "The Definition of Eusociality". Behavioral Ecology. 6: 109–115. doi:10.1093/beheco/6...
Insect biodiversity accounts for a large proportion of all biodiversity on the planet—over half of the estimated 1.5 million organism species described...
Entomophily or insect pollination is a form of pollination whereby pollen of plants, especially but not only of flowering plants, is distributed by insects. Flowers...
chains Ecology can also be classified on the basis of: the primary kinds of organism under study, e.g. animal ecology, plant ecology, insectecology; the...
G.W. (2003). "Insect herbivory increases litter quality and decomposition: an extension of the acceleration hypothesis". in: Ecology 84:2867-2876. Hagen...
by the male gametes from the pollen grains. Insects are the major pollinators of most plants, and insect pollinators include all families of bees and...
A Dictionary of Ecology. Oxford Paperback Reference. Speight, Martin R., Mark D. Hunter and Allan D. Watt (1999). Ecology of Insects: concepts and applications...
of beneficial fire ecology effects on the plant, including increases in leaf and flower production and in genetic diversity. Insects that eat the plant...
there are also examples of ambophilous flowers which are both wind and insect pollinated. Anemophilous, or wind pollinated flowers, are usually small...
agriculture and horticulture because the adult stages of some predatory insects feed on nectar. For example, a number of predacious or parasitoid wasps...
Retrieved 19 March 2015. Claybourne, A. (2013). A Colony of Ants: and Other Insect Groups. Oxford, UK: Raintree Publishers. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-4062-5563-8....
animal or plant that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate...
phytophagous insects, and pollinators). The chemical ecology of plant-insect interaction is a significant subfield of chemical ecology. In particular...
down: progressive and irreversible impacts of silica on insect herbivores". Journal of Animal Ecology. 78 (1): 281–291. Bibcode:2009JAnEc..78..281M. doi:10...
Greek γυνή, "woman") is the primary reproductive female caste of social insects (especially ants, wasps, and bees of order Hymenoptera, as well as termites)...
A pheromone trap is a type of insect trap that uses pheromones to lure insects. Sex pheromones and aggregating pheromones are the most common types used...
Aril Capitulum, a similar appendage with similar purposes found in stick insect eggs. Myrmecochory Gorb, E.; Gorb, S. (2003). Seed Dispersal by Ants in...
fungus is a fungus that can kill or seriously disable insects. They do not need to enter an insect's body through oral ingestion or intake; rather, they...
Global Information