Ethics involved with collecting insects.

[The Snark]

Speaking of ethics and insects, I feel obligated, even compelled to mention this.
A few short eons ago the notable scientista Sarah Palin reviled the US Government spending millions of $$$ experimenting on the poor, innocent and uncorrupted Melanogaster in Paris.
She was absolutely correct. An extremely unethical act by all accounts since they should have dissected her instead, especially considering the irony with the lions share of the Melanogaster experimentation around that time spent studying Down syndrome and out pops a Down's spork from the redoubtable genius..

 

[pannaking22]

Lost some coffee on that one Snark lol.

 

[Exuviae]

I agree with Televanica and pannaking22. Even hobbyists can contribute a great deal of important information to our knowledge of a species. Just because someone doesn't make a profession out of doing insect-related research does not mean that their collections or data are useless. Some people might not have had the financial or educational means of becoming a professional scientist, but they could still dedicate much of their time to learning about these interesting animals. Sure, unlabeled, undocumented collections (i.e. those without date and locality labels) are not always super useful, but a lot of hobby collections are indeed labeled well.

I think collecting is a lot like hunting, in some ways. Personally, I am not interested in hunting, but I think it's acceptable as long as it is done in a respectful, educated manner. If a hunter is aware of the ecology related to removing an individual from a population and chooses his prey carefully, during the right time of year, AND utilizes the animal as best as he can (eat the meat, use the hide and bones, etc.), I think it is vastly different than if he were to shoot any random deer he saw and just took the head or antlers or whatever as a "trophy". Likewise, collecting insects should be done with ecology in mind, so species with fewer individuals should be collected less than species with more individuals. However, insect collecting is different from hunting because, as others have noted, insects rebuild populations very quickly, and there is less resource to waste. I think the main resource we get out of collecting is knowledge, and, to me, that is priceless, and it can even help us protect species in the future. Additionally, mounting deer heads as "trophies" is very different from pinning insects, in my opinion. A stuffed deer head is not a useful scientific resource because they're large enough animals that we can tag and track them. Pinned insects, on the other hand, can help us identify different, but closely related, species via dissection of genitalia and other minute comparisons, as well as provide a variety of other data.

 

[sschind]

I promise you, bio-control is the future.

Like cane toads?

Seriously though in cases like your friends back yard pond the results were effective and nothing was disrupted (except the life cycle of the mosquito in her pond) as for importing non native species for bio control its a far more tricky concept. Even garden centers selling native ladybugs by the thousands and praying mantis ooths for "natural" pest control are coming under closer scrutiny for the effectiveness of it.

Still, it is a concept that warrants much more consideration and I certainly won't argue that chemicals are better.

 

[sschind]

Of the estimated 364,800,000,000,000,000, which ones are you referring to?

number 345,714 when listed alphabetically by genus and species.

 

[Tenevanica]

Like cane toads?

Seriously though in cases like your friends back yard pond the results were effective and nothing was disrupted (except the life cycle of the mosquito in her pond) as for importing non native species for bio control its a far more tricky concept. Even garden centers selling native ladybugs by the thousands and praying mantis ooths for "natural" pest control are coming under closer scrutiny for the effectiveness of it.

Still, it is a concept that warrants much more consideration and I certainly won't argue that chemicals are better.

I won't disagree with what you said. This isn't something that we can jump on willy-nilly, but if we can figure out how to do this safely, it is the alternative. Most of the time you'd be controlling another invasive species. You could make the argument "what more harm could it do?" But like Panna said, "A species of tachinid fly was brought in to control gypsy moths and it decided it liked the native saturniids a lot more, causing huge decreases in population for those species." You'd have to full understand what you're dealing with.

 

[pannaking22]

I think as long as the proper research is put in before introducing a species for bio-control things can work out much better. The tachinid fly and cane toads were brought in more quickly than they probably should have been without proper vetting and proper understanding of their biology to an extent. That's where things can go horribly wrong. With the vedalia beetle, it was observed and tested extensively before being released.

 

[sschind]

I think as long as the proper research is put in before introducing a species for bio-control things can work out much better. The tachinid fly and cane toads were brought in more quickly than they probably should have been without proper vetting and proper understanding of their biology to an extent. That's where things can go horribly wrong. With the vedalia beetle, it was observed and tested extensively before being released.

Exactly. when you have a species that feeds "exclusively" on another species which happens to be a pest and it is introduced into a foreign environment as a bio control I wonder what is more likely to happen A) it eats all the pest species and dies out. B) it reaches an equilibrium with the pest species controlling but not eliminating it or C) eats all the pest species and finds something else it like just as much. My money is on B or C. A would probably be ideal, B is probably most likely to happen and C or a variation of C where it finds a new food source it like better and ignores the pest is a very real possibility.

In the reef keeping hobby there is a species of anemone that can reproduce at prodigious rates and overrun a tank. There are a few species that are often recommended as controls. One is a species of shrimp that will eat the anemones and is rather a nice specimen in and of itself totally worthy of keeping. Fortunately it does not need the anemones to survive and once the pest anemone is eradicated it will accept most standard aquarium fare and will pretty much leave other species alone Unfortunately some people report mixed results, especially if other foods (foods the aquarist adds not natural food living in the tank) are plentiful. There is also a species of nudibranch that will eat the anemone and thus far it appears to be the only thing it eats. Once all the anemones are gone you need to remove the nudibranch or it will starve. In a closed setting such as an aquarium this may not be a problem. On the other hand if we were to expand this to a natural setting the nudibranch could possibly find new foods more to its liking in a new location.

Bio controls are very appealing and I think its a fascinating subject but like was pointed out a few times, it needs to be very well thought out. The Cane toad comment was more of a joke as I understand it wasn't very well planned and I would hope that whoever was making the decision would study the ramifications a little more. A lot more actually.