Protect Species Podcast

Grasshoppers Great & Small: the Tremendous Impact of Tiny Creatures

Global Center for Species Survival Season 1 Episode 14

This week on the Protect Species Podcast, we're delighted to be joined not only by our guest, Dr. Axel Hochkirch, curator at the Natural History Museum in Luxembourg and grasshopper expert, but also Dr. Sérgio Henriques, the Invertebrate Conservation Coordinator at the Global Center for Species Survival.

We'll take a look at the career paths of these two passionate invertebrate conservationists, exploring the excitement of fieldwork, the thrill of rediscovering species once thought extinct, and the essential role that local communities play in conservation efforts. Axel's focus on grasshoppers and Sérgio's dedication to spiders demonstrate the often-overlooked importance of invertebrates in maintaining biodiversity. Their stories highlight how chance encounters and dedicated mentors can lead to a fulfilling career in species preservation.

We also delve into the successes and ongoing challenges of invertebrate conservation within the IUCN framework. From targeted conservation actions for grasshoppers and wild bees to innovative strategies in the Canary Islands' laurel forests, our experts cover a wide range of topics. Learn about the significance of preserving unique species habitats, the impact of biotic homogenization, and why every species, no matter how small, holds intrinsic value. Tune in for an inspiring call to action to protect local ecosystems and contribute to biodiversity conservation.

Links:
Dr. Axel Hochkirch - IUCN
Dr. Axel Hochkirch - Google Scholar
Meet the Pollinator Expert
IUCN SSC Invertebrate Conservation Committee
IUCN SSC Grasshopper Specialist Group

Speaker 1:

Six legs, eight legs, lots of legs, no legs or just one foot. Today we are talking invertebrates. And who better to talk about invertebrates to than Dr Axel Hochkirch, who leads the Invertebrate Conservation Committee of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission and, of course, has huge love for all the little critters? I'm Moni Böhm.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Sergio Henriquez. Welcome to the Protect Species podcast, where we celebrate biodiversity and converse with conservationists.

Speaker 1:

Wow, Sergio Henriquez, you're not Justin. Can you introduce yourself, please?

Speaker 2:

Hi, hello Moni, I can. So I am the Invertebrate Conservation Coordinator here at the Global Center for Species Survival and I'm also the co-chair of the Spider and Scorpion Specialist Group for the IUDN SSC, the Species Survival Commission.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I see there's definitely the invertebrate connection. Hence it makes sense that you're joining me for this podcast. How did you get into invertebrate surgery and and keep it relatively short?

Speaker 2:

I will try. Yeah, I, I have a very. I had a very generalist approach to wildlife. I enjoyed being outdoors and spending time in nature and I just came to realize that invertebrates were everywhere. They were just the most diverse group and I just found out that they, besides of their diversity and role in ecosystems, they were just the most diverse group and I just found out that they, besides of their diversity and role in ecosystems, they were among the least studied. So I felt compelled to fulfill that gap, to go for the underdog, the underbug in this case, and so I became passionate about inverts, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to know.

Speaker 1:

Would it be fair to call you Spider-Man for the rest of?

Speaker 2:

the podcast. Maybe it's a very common acronym I get actually, or a very common noun. There's many Spider-Mens. A lot of people are a fan of spiders these days, so, yeah, I can be one of those. Can you shoot?

Speaker 1:

spider webs out of your wrists.

Speaker 2:

No, not yet. I've been working on that but haven't yet perfected the technique.

Speaker 1:

Next question have you ever been bitten by a spider? So it could have happened. You know my Spider-Man lore coming into play here.

Speaker 2:

Never a radioactive spider.

Speaker 1:

I'm afraid that would have been the third question A normal non-radioactive spider.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, normal spiders usually don't like to be handled. I sometimes have to or forget that I should use other methods and handle spiders, and sometimes they show me that they don't like it and biting is one of their defenses, one of many. Running away is actually the most common defense a spider does, and a very common defense you might have seen in your house or our listeners might have seen, is when they play dead. A lot of spiders, when threatened, they'll just stay very still, curl their legs and even if you poke them, they will not move. So that is the most common reaction I've seen. But yes, if I do hold them, if I break their act in a way and I show them that I know they're not dead, they might try. Sometimes they fail because they have such a small mouth and we have fairly thick skins. But yes, some spiders have tried to bit me. Over 20 years I've been doing this. I have been bitten a few times Well deserved, by the way.

Speaker 1:

Axel, welcome. It's great to have you here. Can you just please quickly tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do for our listeners? I mean, we know you very well, of course.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, my name is Axel Hochkirch. I'm based at the Natural History Museum in Luxembourg and I'm a curator for ecology there, and my main task is actually to do research on species conservation, but also to help the conservationists in our country to start and better connect conservation strategies and implement conservation action for species species. And I'm also chair of the IUCN SSC Invertebrate Conservation Committee, which is a large network of voluntary experts on conservation, and we currently try to expand the knowledge and the contribution of this network to invertebrate conservation. And I'm also co-chair of the Grasshopper Specialist Group. This is actually the way I started in the IUCN with establishing the Grasshopper Specialist Group, so my main expertise is actually on grasshoppers.

Speaker 1:

That's a lot of hats. Before we go into your current work, can we talk a little bit about young Axel, because when many people think of conservation, they think of big beasts like you know rhinos and tigers and all of those big mammals or birds. What sparked your passion for invertebrates?

Speaker 3:

Well, actually I always was also interested in tigers and mammals when I was a child and I decided to become a conservationist for animals. Actually, when I was very young, I was very much impressed by a German filmmaker who was also a zoo director and a very strong conservationist in Germany, and when I was, I think, three or four years old, I asked my mother what is the job of this guy? I want to do the same. And so that was actually the start, and I was always interested in all kinds of animals. It was not just the large ones, yeah. So because maybe because in my home country, in Germany, we do not have so many large animals, yeah, so it's much easier to find grasshoppers or butterflies in the next meadow than observing a wolf, which just has recolonized Germany a few years ago. So that was also a reason why I was interested in everything, and particularly actually birds and amphibians at the beginning. And when I did my civilian service which I made because I didn't want to go to the military I decided to do it in nature conservation. So I joined a conservation project in northern Germany and we had to make a new management plan for a new conservation protected area, and for this plan, we had to make surveys of a couple of different species. And, yeah, my boss said, well, we have a lot of people for many different taxa, but we need somebody for grasshoppers. So can you maybe do a survey on grasshoppers? And I said, yes, sure.

Speaker 3:

And so I started with grasshoppers at this time, and I always when I started biology, I tried to also learn other taxa. So I did some training on bugs and on dragonflies and butterflies and so on. I always was interested in everything still, but always, somehow I was always pushed back to the grasshoppers. Yeah, and one of the courses in at the university I wanted to learn another new insect order. And my supervisor said, well, he only can supervise dragonflies or grasshoppers, so can you please stay with these?

Speaker 3:

I said, ok, ok, I stay with the grasshoppers again. And then I wanted to do my thesis so at this time it was called diploma thesis in Germany, but it's something like a master's and I went to Tanzania, to a conservation project in the East Zambara Mountains, and I said, well, I want to do some research on birds here. And the person who was in charge of the conservation research there said, well, we had a lot of research on birds, why don't you choose an invertebrate group? And I said, okay, in this case I'd take grasshoppers, because I know them a little bit already, but of course African grasshoppers are so different from European ones that it was also very new for me. But still I knew how this group works, how these critters are functioning, more or less.

Speaker 1:

I love the fact that it's well. You know I would have done pretty much anything, but then lots of people prodded you in the direction of grasshoppers. That's one grasshoppers by stealth. And also a lovely shout out to Bernard Jimek. I obviously grew up near Frankfurt, so we went to Frankfurt Zoo a lot and my parents always, always told me about him, so also a little bit of an inspiration for myself.

Speaker 2:

Hi Axel. So what do you think is the best part of your job? What is the most challenging as well?

Speaker 3:

Such a difficult question because it's such a. Well, I think the best thing is the very strong variety of things I have to do. Yeah, I'm not always doing the same things, that's good. And I love traveling, I love to see animals, so I really love to do field work, uh, and and and observe animals. And actually, particularly if you work with insects, a lot of things you observe in nature is completely new to science. So particularly if you go to the tropics and, let's say you, you visit an african rainforest and you observe any insect, you can be quite sure that the thing you observe is completely new to science.

Speaker 3:

I think that is quite unique to these species-rich groups compared to mammals or birds, where you have already a lot of literature and have to find a suitable research question so you can easily find out new stuff, find a suitable research question. So it's it's, you can, you can easily find out new stuff. But of course, I also love the rediscoveries. For example, we have rediscovered two grasshopper species which were lost, which were not found since the sixties, and that is, of course, great, yeah, because you think, well, they're probably gone. And then you do some research for years and you have even some students who travel there and they don't find it. And then on one day you get a WhatsApp with a photo and they say well, they found it finally. And then you know OK, now we have a chance to still preserve this species. And maybe this chance is really better in this case, because people are all excited about it. It all went to the media and the local people are excited that they found this rare species again. And then there's a kind of ownership in the population and you see that the people are, in fact, willing to help species to survive, and that's also something which I really enjoy.

Speaker 3:

Whenever I work with people in all these conservation workshops we have done, people were always supportive. Yeah, I, I realized that most of the extinctions, particularly in the insect world, are mainly going on because of lack of knowledge. Yeah, because people simply have no idea what they have to do or what they should not do. Uh, but uh, but they don't want people, species, to go extinct. Yeah, if we, except for the tsetse, fly maybe. Yeah, so parasites and and and pathogens and so on, but for the majority of species, they really want the species to survive and this is why we usually get a really strong support, even by stakeholders, which we had not on our list of potential supporters before we go to the what's the most challenging part of your job, because I feel we didn't quite get there.

Speaker 1:

Um, what's the species that was rediscovered? Give it a face. What's its name? Where? Where is it from? Where does it live? How did you find it? I mean, you found it via WhatsApp message. We established that, yeah.

Speaker 3:

I mean, one of these species which was rediscovered is called Ivagudere's caprerori, which is not really a nice name, but it's also called the Grand Canary bush cricket, and this species was really lost for a very long time.

Speaker 3:

A lot of people have searched on the type locality for the species and actually I had some students who went to grand canaria to search for the species and they really did a lot of searches and they couldn't find it at all and it was, I think, on the on the day before they left, more or less. Yeah, when they went there very late at night more or less, it was very dark, a very steep terrain, so it was really difficult to access, and they heard a very strange sound. It was a song of a grasshopper which they didn't know. So they searched for this specimen and they found one Probably not the one which was singing, because the photo they sent me was a female, which you typically not sing, but anyway. So they found a specimen and made a photo of this and that was really a very nice thing, and then I sent some other students a few months later to search for it again and they found another locality.

Speaker 3:

yeah, so step by now that we knew the song of the species, it became more and more easy to find it. Yeah, so I think third group of students had even found two new localities. So meanwhile I think we have six localities of the species, but it appears to be very rare, so usually they only find one or two specimens, and it always is found on very steep slopes which are very difficult to access, and it appears to be nocturnal, and this was probably the reason why it has not been found for such a long time. So it's it's actually difficult to find it without a proper method. Yeah, and the bioacoustics is really a good method for, uh, for grasshoppers, because many of these species are easier to find by song and they all have a very specific song, so they can be identified based upon the song.

Speaker 2:

Well, you often mention the students and how important was their contribution. So if there's any young people, or even parents, who are listening to this podcast, do you have any advice for future conservationists and for what they can do?

Speaker 1:

I mean, you want a trip to gran canaria? Reach out to axel yes, uh.

Speaker 3:

Well, there are so many things to be done. I think the most important thing is that people develop some interest in insects. Yeah, so that they first get some knowledge. Yeah, I mean, I'm a grasshopper conservationist, maybe mainly because I know grasshoppers. Yeah, so I I have now the sufficient knowledge that I can can help people to do conservation for grasshoppers anyway, so you only can protect what you know. Yeah, and that's that's important to at least start identifying insects.

Speaker 3:

You do not need to try to identify all of them, yeah, because no entomologist is able to identify all insects even in this garden, yeah, so there are so many insects that it's it's impossible to know them all, and this is why you have to specialize on a group.

Speaker 3:

This is why I'm doing grasshoppers and know some dragonflies and butterflies, which are comparatively small groups. But even if you work with beetles, most people are specialized on either dung beetles or ground beetles or whatever. So you need a group where you can get sufficient species knowledge on. And this is one important thing, and I think the technology now helps us to develop these skills, because with the new artificial image recognition systems and so on, it's quite easy to identify insects with, let's say, inaturalist or, in Europe, with observationorg, which has this OpsIdentify app, where you simply make a photo and it tells you the name of the species and then you can dig a little bit deeper, because if you have the species name, the first thing I usually do is try to find out how common or rare it is. Yeah, and I see this with my children, which we're doing the same things when they find it, when they find an insect, and they know the name they usually want to know if it's a rare or special species, and this information is usually at least in developed countries readily available.

Speaker 3:

You have a lot of information on the Internet and Wikipedia and so on, where you can already learn something on, let's say, the foot plants of a butterfly or whatever, and this information again helps you then to start some conservation, because if you have a very rare species in your region and you know it may be the only locality in this region and you know the requirements of the species, let's say the foot plant or whatever then you can start promoting this species by helping to develop a proper management of these sites.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. We'll put the links to iNaturalist and various other sites that you just mentioned in our show notes as well, so people can find the linkages there and kind of start identifying insects. We're coming probably now just naturally to one of the more challenging parts of your job because, as we mentioned in the introduction, you are the chair of the IUCN SSC, that's, the Species Survival Commission of their Invertebrate Conservation Committee, which both Sergio and I are involved with through our jobs at the Global Center. Can you explain the role of the conservation committees and why? It might be a little bit like herding cats Because there's a lot of people involved and a lot of different species groups as well?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean when I started to become active in the SSC in 2010, which was not so long ago.

Speaker 3:

In the end, there were only four specialist groups for invertebrates in place yeah, one for mollusks, one for freshwater crustaceans, one for dragonflies and one for corals and I, at this time, established the grasshopper specialist group and I found that still all the invertebrates and all the insects are very underrepresented in the iucn world and all the insects are very underrepresented in the IUCN world, and this means they are also underrepresented in conservation policy.

Speaker 3:

They are underrepresented on the IUCN red list. They are underrepresented everywhere where we try to protect biodiversity. This is still the case, but it has become better, and this was my main task, in fact, in the committee to try to establish new specialist groups covering all these taxa. We have now, I think, about 20 specialist groups dealing with invertebrates, and this is already very good, but still some are missing. Yeah, and it's always depending on finding the right people who are willing to share such a group and and start networking with all the experts in the world who are dealing with these taxa and start to to establish some conservation strategies or conservation efforts for these groups yeah, so, as you said, there's a lot of groups and you yourself wear quite a few hats.

Speaker 2:

You have different roles because you're also the chair of the grasshopper specialist group, which you, as you just mentioned, helped establish. So it didn't exist before you arrived. Why did you set up this group and what is its role in grasshopper conservation more broadly?

Speaker 1:

Somebody told Axel set it up. You like the grasshoppers? Remember Again prodding you in this direction. That's how I picture it.

Speaker 2:

But why creating a group? Why wouldn't you just continue studying grasshoppers somewhere in a rainforest in Africa? Why did you think setting up a group in the IUCN was the way forward or is an important step?

Speaker 3:

I mean, I was always interested in conservation, as I said, and when I did my civilian service, as I said before, when I started to do these surveys on grasshoppers, I also found a population of a very rare species, at least in this part of Germany it was rare the field cricket. And I thought, well, we have to do something about it, because it was the last population in the western part of Lower Saxony and in northern Germany. And I said, well, we have to do something to avoid that it goes extinct. At this point there were only 32 singing males left of this species in this area, which was nearly nothing for an insect, yeah. So I said, okay, this species requires heathlands and this heathland is now overgrown by pines, so we have to remove the pines. So we removed them. Yeah, the good thing was, uh, because that was in the conservation project and the land was owned by the county. We talked to the responsible people of the county and said, yeah, you can remove the pines. So we did it, and the next year we already saw the heathland spreading and then the grasshopper, so the cricket was actually uh, spreading as well, and after a few years we have reached 1,000 singing individuals.

Speaker 3:

And I thought well, so insect conservation works quite well. If you do it, so you have to do it, and usually nobody does it. So in all the conservation NGOs, people are focusing on birds and mammals, maybe sometimes plants like orchids, but rarely on insects. And as soon as you do some proper conservation management for species, you have some success. So when I was invited to a conference in 2009 in Antalya in Turkey to give a presentation on orthoptera conservation, I said, well, maybe I focus a little bit on what is being done on the global scale. So I did some Internet research and found that on the ice and red list at this time there were 74 species of grasshoppers listed, and I remember that I presented the statistics in this presentation and all the people were really annoyed at this. Statistics in this presentation, and all the people were really annoyed. It's like whoa, why are only so few orthoptera only 74 of the 30,000 described species listed on the ISN Red List? This can't be true.

Speaker 1:

The orthoptera. Of course they're the grasshopper family, right yeah?

Speaker 3:

orthoptera, grasshoppers, bush crickets and crickets. Yeah, so why are only so few species covered? And so I said I said, well, it's actually our fault, because only we can change it. It's not the isan who does the red list assessments, it's the species experts, so we have to somehow do it by ourself. And then in a coffee break I was sitting together with some other colleagues particularly Michael Samways was also in this group who was a former chair of the ICC, the Invert Break Conservation Committee and I said, well, why don't we establish this grasshopper specialist group? And he actually was supportive of that and gave me some help to do it. And then we wrote a proposal to the SSC steering committee which was approved. And then finally we were in place and actually at the beginning I didn't want to chair it. Yeah, it wasn't a little bit, we were sitting together and and then we realized we need a chair and I was the only one who didn't step back. Yeah, but actually also familiar.

Speaker 3:

But yeah, but I also found it so important that it needs to be done. Yeah, because I knew that the grasshoppers and and and related insects will only be considered in the conservation world if somebody really has a voice for them, and this is what what the uh specialist groups are doing in the end, yeah. So since that time, we have done a lot of projects. It started, actually, with a red list assessment of the European grasshoppers, and this European red list of grasshoppers was published in 2016. And this already showed that actually, the proportion of grasshoppers which is threatened is quite high compared to other taxa. Yeah, and then we started also other red list assessments in other areas seychelles were covered, south africa and so on. So we have already now more than 1 000 species of the ice and red list, which is still not a lot if you think about 30 000 described species, but it's. It's definitely a better coverage than before.

Speaker 3:

And then the next step, of course, if you have a red list, you want to go further. You know which species are threatened and now you want to avoid that they go extinct. So usually what we do is then choose those which are the highest on the red list and see what we can do for their conservation Red List and see what we can do for their conservation, and one of the projects which was started, actually based upon the Red List, was the conservation project for the crow plane grasshopper, which is a grasshopper which is endemic to the crow step in southern France. And at this time in 2013, actually already I was contacted by Laurent Tartin, who was, at this time, the researcher in this protected area in southern France, and he told me that this species is actually declining within the protected area and they have no idea why, and so we thought, ok, we have to do something about it. And again, as I was based at the university at this time, I had a really good opportunity again to send students.

Speaker 3:

And of course I went there also by myself and we made a plan to first close some knowledge gaps because hardly anything was known about this species, and then we actually made a workshop a year later, together with the major stakeholders, to develop a conservation strategy for this species.

Speaker 1:

Who gets typically invited to such a workshop?

Speaker 3:

Well, you usually look for those people who can, who have any yeah interest or any any uh possibilities to help with the conservation of the species. Yeah, everybody who's managing the land. In fact, yes, we invited, of course, people from the protected area, from the conservation authorities. There were people from zoos who had some specialized on conservation breeding. There were was even somebody from the french army, because part of the land is owned by the french army. We also invited farmers, because the shepherds, particularly, are managing the land. So we invited everybody who could really help us to do something for the conservation of this species.

Speaker 3:

And then this conservation strategy was finalized and the good thing is that Laurent Tartin was still in place and he implemented all the steps which were necessary. I helped again, yeah, because we had to implement also a lot of research targets of the plan, and the research targets were, of course, again covered by students. And then the students yeah, particularly PhD students and Linda Bruder, who actually stayed there for three years and collected a lot of data and developed some very good methods to better monitor the species and found all the main threats. And now, based upon all this work, there's a really large life project in place with a two million euro budget to preserve the species place with a 2 million euro budget to preserve the species. So it shows you, when you start something small, it sometimes can grow to something bigger. And now this year there will be an effort to translocate individuals to a new site for the first time.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's amazing. That's an impressive amount of work in a relatively short time. Is this the species that you're also working on training detection dogs for, or is that a different species?

Speaker 3:

Yes, exactly that's the problem with this species is that's so difficult to find, so it looks like a stone and it also behaves like a stone.

Speaker 1:

Which is good. In the crow step right Because there's lots of stones.

Speaker 3:

Yes, it's good, probably against predators, but it's very bad for monitoring and it's also not singing. I told you about this canarian species which is singing, which is easy to find if you know the song, but this one hardly sings. It can sing, it produces a sound, but it doesn't produce it regularly and also probably not for attracting females.

Speaker 1:

It's very much like me. I can sing, I just try not to.

Speaker 3:

Therefore, it is really difficult to monitor and you have to do a lot of effort to find it. We calculated the capture rate at the beginning of the project it was just 6%. You will only find 6% of the individuals which are on the site, which means you have to do a lot of surveys until you have good data available. And because of that we thought, well, maybe it's a good option to train detection dogs to find it. And yeah, so we actually contacted people who are specialized on conservation detection dogs and they trained a dog and it was actually quite easy for them. So for the dog to find them. Yeah, so they can actually smell the this species yeah, not only a grasshopper, but this grasshopper species that's amazing, which is of course, important.

Speaker 3:

But the only problem was the dog was even too good for us because, um, sometimes the dog smelled, apparently the smell, but we couldn't find the species, which is then difficult to train the dog because you have to give him some rewards by playing with it and so on. But but in this case, if you don't find it, but the dog finds a smell, it could be that the grasshopper was there 10 minutes ago and that you cannot find it again because it just disappeared somewhere else. But it was in the end quite successful. And finally, we managed also to find a new, at least an extension of a known population where we didn't know that it occurs. So we have now better knowledge on its distribution, also because of that.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing and also well good dog first of all, but also that means that I was successful at crowbarring talk about dogs into this podcast, so I'm happy. This podcast is a production of the Global Center for Species Survival at the Indianapolis Zoo. I'm happy.

Speaker 2:

It's an amazing topic and amazing achievement as well. I know you also are a key contributor in the development of several other species and action plan besides grasshopper, such as European pollinators and probably many more. What do these plans do actually? What are you doing on pollinators?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean with the pollinators. For example, that was a contract with the ICN regional office in Brussels and with the European Commission. So the European Commission has a pollinator initiative and they try to do a lot of things for pollinator conservation. So a lot of european countries have now conservation action plans for pollinators, but also these are just general action plans, yeah, so where we're, just some general actions which help pollinators are recommended and they are not very specific and not always in a form I would like to have them, but they. But they also asked us to develop three conservation action plans for highly threatened pollinators in Europe and for this they had the recommendation or the prerequisite that these species should be widely distributed. But highly threatened Species should be widely distributed but highly threatened, which is not so easy because usually the highly threatened species have a narrow distribution and the widely are less threatened. So it was a bit difficult to find the right species at the end. But we finally had three conservation action plans and all of them are for more than one species, more than one species. So the first one was done for the canary islands endemic pollinators which are endemic to the laurel forests. Laurel forests are the native vegetation at higher elevation in the canary islands, and most of them have been deforested or are threatened by climate change or have been planted with pines and so on. So difficult, different threats. So we had actually a bunch of species we could actually preserve with these plants.

Speaker 3:

Um, a second plan was for wild bee species which are specialized on teasel plants. So many wild bees are specialized on a single plant family or a single plant genus. Even and particularly the teasel plants are interesting because there are not so many species in europe and these species are usually flowering quite late in the season, which means they are already mown before they're flowering. Yeah, and this is why a lot of bee species specialized on teasel plants are threatened. So we thought, okay, this might be also an interesting group to cover. So we had one which is actually valid for all of Europe for the teasel plant specialized bees.

Speaker 3:

And the third one was for hoverflies, which are specialized on so-called veteran trees. So veteran trees are those which are wounded, which have some subflow or which have some dead parts but are still living, and these are usually not kept alive. So either they are cut down or the dead branches are cut because people think they do something good if they save this tree, something good if they save this tree. But of course, these small structures are important habitats, micro habitats, for the larvae of hoverflies. So this last plant therefore covers these hoverflies, which have have different goals, and the goals are shaped a little bit around.

Speaker 3:

The main things you have to address to get them preserved have a lack of knowledge, or we have a lack of knowledge on them, or lack of data regarding distribution or habitat preferences or threats and so on, and so we have usually very special research targets also on them.

Speaker 3:

For example, for these teasel plant specialized bees, we would like to know how specialized they really are, and we can do this by collecting the pollen, and with genetic methods we can actually see if they really collect pollen only from one plant species or several, and so on. And this helps us then to create a better conservation management, because based upon this knowledge, we can say, ok, they need this plant. So we have to make sure that flowers of this plant are available. And the second part is, of course, the conservation management of the habitat. Usually, most of the insect species are threatened by habitat decline, habitat loss or habitat deterioration, and this means usually you have to adapt the management to get them preserved, and this can be in terms of the teaser mowing the meadow later than before, or keeping some teaser plant-rich areas along road verges, and so on.

Speaker 2:

You mentioned habitat management quite a lot and a big part of your career seems to have focused on habitat management. Can you explain specifically, besides, besides mowing, what people can do or what do you think should be done going forward to protect invertebrates specifically?

Speaker 1:

or even how it relates to different invertebrate groups. I assume habitat management, as you mentioned, with the veteran trees for example, is different between different species groups, and there's so many of them in the invertebrate world. It's like where to start.

Speaker 3:

It's overwhelming yeah, of course I mean. There's so many of them in the invertebrate world. It's like where to start? It's overwhelming. Yeah, of course I mean. There's a very strong variability in the habitat requirements of invertebrates.

Speaker 3:

So I think each and everything you do will help a species or may also be bad for a species. So, depending on the species, the problem we have is currently that all the people are doing the same things. So there is something we call in science biotic homogenization, which means everything becomes more and more similar, and this is actually a pattern we also found in our own research. When we did a comparison of the species assemblages in different habitats in our region, we found that actually the species diversity on a single site does not necessarily change, but if you look across many sites, it changes because all of the sites have now the same species assemblages, while formerly they had different species assemblages, and this is caused by the globalization, more or less, but also by the way the like let's say gardening is promoted by garden centers and so on. The garden centers are selling all the same plants and they are promoting the same plants. So we see in the gardens always, at least here in Europe, a lot of species which have been introduced from other countries and the species usually do not help insects because the insects, as I said, are often specialized in their food, so they cannot really live with these foreign species. So the foreign species are very valuable in their native habitat, but not there, and this is something we have to change. And this is also something where everybody can do something by planting native shrubs or flowers or whatever in their gardens and, of course, not using pesticides, not using fertilizers, just do it as natural as possible, but often in the gardens. Well, you can even have some rare species in gardens, but often the rarest species are usually not in gardens but in some special habitats which are either in protected areas or not.

Speaker 3:

And if they are not in protected areas, you can, of course, try to consult with people who have more expertise in conservation management, like conservation NGOs or the authorities, to see if this area can be protected or if the management can be adapted to help this species. And, as I said, the management can be quite different depending on this species. And, as I said, the management can be quite different depending on the species. I mean, the management you do for protecting this hoverfly is very different from the teasel bees. So it depends on very much on your goals and it's always wise to first have a look.

Speaker 3:

What are the most highly threatened species in a certain area? This is also something which can be done in protected areas. So if you have a large protected area, the most important information would be which species occur there, and a lot of protected areas don't have this knowledge. Yeah, there are some protected areas which have good databases on species, but there are a lot who only know well these kind of birds occur there or these kinds of plants, but not usually insects. Yeah, and if they know they have the only population of this insect species on the planet, like in the crow plane in in southern france, then they know they have a responsibility and then they also adapt the management to help the species.

Speaker 1:

This is amazing. I feel our conversation is kind of going nicely closing the circle as we get towards the end of this podcast. You mentioned that obviously these habitat management strategies, they apply to protected areas. They also apply really to people's gardens and part of this is again know what's in your garden, right, go onto these different apps, identify insects. So I feel we've really come full circle from where the conversation started. But also I think we should at least because I feel we've skirted around a really important, a very important thing about invertebrates and that is why is it so scary to see invertebrates, especially insects, decline so dramatically? And I feel that gives probably people in their gardens and protected area managers in their protected areas the why they should do it. Why would you like to sound the alarm now about these extinctions, Axel? What's at stake?

Speaker 3:

I think there are several reasons for that. First of all, of course, insects are such a species-rich group, which all have unique evolutionary histories, and we should not be the ones who finally stop this evolution, this tremendous amount of biodiversity which has grown over millions of years, and of course this is something we call responsibility for biodiversity on a planet. And of course, they also have functions. All ecosystems are in need of insects. There's not a single ecosystem in the terrestrial ecosystem, except for the Arctic, maybe, but there's hardly any biodiversity. But yeah, so if you go for ecosystems and terrestrial reams, you usually cannot get them running without insects. You have the pollinators, you have the decomposers, you have biocontrol and so on. All these functions the insects are playing are so tremendously important.

Speaker 3:

But even without these functions, I think that each and every species on the planet has a right to exist. So I think it's a little bit like human rights. So why don't we give them the right to exist? And I think this is actually the background of all the conservation efforts on the planet.

Speaker 3:

If you look at the preamble of the biodiversity conservation conventional biodiversity, sorry or other legal documents, often the intrinsic value of species is mentioned, which means that, independent of function a species has a right to exist. Function a species has a right to exist. Yeah, and I think it is actually giving you a lot of pleasure to see how many species are in your garden, but also if you help them to survive. Yeah, if then, when I was young and managed this field cricket population to not only survive but even grow and give rise to a second translocated population later, that was really a very nice conservation success, and I see the same now with the crowbanks, grasshoppers and other species we protect. Yeah, I think that's the best reward you can get to see that you have cared for a species.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. So all species have a right to exist, huge evolutionary diversity, enormous ecosystem functions and, just generally also the the health and mental health benefits that green spaces and the species that live in them give to us, I think, are super important to always remember.

Speaker 2:

The ones we see and the ones you hear. You mentioned the cricket. I can imagine how deafening it would be to have a silent meadow where you can't hear crickets at night in summer. It's an important component of our interaction with nature.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, there's hardly any Hollywood movie where you don't have singing crickets in one summer evening.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely Singing crickets, fireflies, butterflies, all of these things Wonderful. Thank you so much, Axel, for this really exciting chat about invertebrates and also giving our listeners a little bit of some ideas of what they can do to support invertebrates in their backyards. Really wonderful to talk to you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Axel. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2:

It was great to meet you wonderful to talk to you, thank you, thank you. Thank you very much. It was great to meet you. Don't forget to subscribe to the protect species podcast to ensure you're the first to know when new episodes are available. If you like what you hear, we'd love for you to leave us a review and follow us on social media. We're on facebook, instagram and x.

People on this episode