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Biodiversity

World of insects

Nature volume 448, pages 657–658 (2007)Cite this article

When it comes to understanding patterns of biodiversity, ours is a little-known planet. Large-scale sampling projects, as carried out in two investigations of insect diversity, show a way forward.

To a first approximation, all multicellular species on Earth are insects1, and yet explanations for terrestrial biodiversity are largely based on birds, large mammals and plants. Studies of insect diversity by Novotny et al.2 and Dyer et al.3 (pages 692 and 696 of this issue) help to redress this imbalance, and provide an improved understanding of the distribution of global diversity.

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Figure 1: Foliage feeder.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nigel E. Stork is in the School of Resource Management, University of Melbourne, Burnley Campus, 500 Yarra Boulevard, Victoria 3121, Australia. nstork@unimelb.edu.au,

    Nigel E. Stork

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  1. Nigel E. Stork
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Stork, N. World of insects. Nature 448, 657–658 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/448657a

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