DOI: 10.5061/dryad.cjsxksnhr
title: What do we know about insect responses to global change? A review of meta-analyses on global change drivers

description: Global change is causing major declines in biodiversity, especially of
 insects. Scientific interest in global change impacts on insects has
 increased in recent years, resulting in many different meta-analyses
 examining questions within this topic. We performed a comprehensive review
 of meta-analyses examining effects of global change stressors on insects
 to identify well-studied questions and gaps in our knowledge and
 synthesize responses of insects to those stressors. We identified 75
 meta-analyses that fit our scope, accounting for 905 meta-results, and
 spanning 18 global change stressors. Our synthesis identified several
 global change stressors that are relatively well-studied across insect
 groups, such as agriculture, habitat degradation, and pesticide use.
 Moreover, other global change stressors were found to be relatively
 less-studied, highlighting areas that need more attention; for example,
 very few meta-analyses considered the impacts of global warming, ozone,
 light pollution, and interactive effects of multiple stressors on insects.
 Most stressors are more associated with negative than positive effects on
 insects, except for nutrient addition, ozone, and air pollution. Negative
 effects accounted for the large majority of consequences on reproduction
 responses, which may help explain recent insect declines. Additionally, we
 found evidence for higher trophic levels being more negatively affected by
 global change, and insects in aquatic habitats experiencing fewer negative
 responses to stressors. Given these largely negative impacts of global
 change on insects, we argue for the need for national and local policy
 actions to monitor and actively conserve insect communities.
description: # What do we know about insect responses to global change? A review of
 meta-analyses on global change drivers Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.cjsxksnhr](10.5061/dryad.cjsxksnhr) ## Description of the
 data and file structure We performed a literature search for meta-analyses
 studying the effects of global change on insects. We extracted data from
 these meta-analyses to perform a vote-count type of analysis.  ### Files
 and variables #### File: Global\_change\_meta-analyses\_data\_cleaned.xlsx
 **Description:** Dataset with data used in the paper.  ##### Variables *
 Entry: Unique identifier for each entry * Paper#: Unique identifier of the
 paper * Author: Author name * Year: Year of publication *
 AuthorYear: combined author and year * DOI: DOI of paper * Global change
 driver single/multiple: if the global change driver studies is a single
 driver or multiple drivers. * Global change drivers: specify the global
 change driver * Geographic region: region at which they restricted their
 review - e.g. global, or North America, western hemisphere etc. * studies
 in EU and US: Percent of studies that were from the North America/EU. NA =
 information was not possible to extract from the paper. * filtered by
 English: Does the review only include papers published in English? (Y/N) *
 Number of total papers included: Number of papers (not cases) included in
 the review or meta-analysis * Lab/Field/Mixed: did the meta-analysis
 review literature that was all in the Field? Lab? or was it Mixed between
 the two? * Review of all insects: did they review all insecta (Y) or did
 they restrict taxonomical/functional (N) * Type of Restriction: Taxonomic
 or functional restriction?More than Arthropod, Arthropod (&gt;50% insect),
 or Insect (only Insects included), was the study only on Pollinators or
 soil Insects for example. * Type of Restriction_cleaned: column 'Type
 of Restriction' cleaned by removing redundant information (e.g.,
 insect or arthropod is not a restriction) * Coded from: which figure or
 table or text page we got the data from. * Type of group: taxonomic,
 habitat, functional - IF there is no division by taxonomic, habitat, or
 functional group, then we discard/do not enter the data. Include
 'overall' if they are divided into subcategories,
 'multiple' when there are multiple response variables/groups
 combined but not teased apart. * Groups Studied: Functional: herbivores,
 detritivores, predators, parasitoids, omnivore, pollinator etc.,
 Taxonomic: Leps, Orthops, etc., Habitat: grassland, forest, aquatic. *
 Groups Studied_simplified: removed redundancies from column 'Group
 Studied' * individual/population/community: heirarchical level of
 study: Must be individual, population, or community response. *
 Response: what are the authors were measuring (e.g., physiology,
 phenology, behavior change, abundance, richness, diversity, etc). *
 Response cleaned: removed redundancies from column 'Response' *
 \# cases: how many cases included in this response measure, NA if not
 known * Direction of results: positive, negative, null for their effect
 size for this response variable where the treatment is the global change
 (e.g. if abundance goes down with fire, then direction of results is
 negative compared to the control w/ no global change). * Notes: any
 relevant notes.