Mutualisms and Insect Conservation

Abstract

This book is a broad survey of some of these associations, emphasising the needs to understand mutualisms and the roles they can play in wider insect conservation. Whilst much attention to insect conservation has traditionally focused on single species, this account pursues the broader theme advocated strongly for island biota by Kaiser-Bunbury et al. (2009) that the real conservation challenge is ‘maintaining and restoring the integrity of interactions between species’, amongst which mutualisms have a key and central place as involving widespread cascade effects if they are disturbed. Many such associations involve insects.