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Studies of insect temporal trends must account for the complex sampling histories inherent to many long-term monitoring efforts

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 5, pages 589–591 (2021)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 05 April 2021

The Original Article was published on 10 August 2020

arising from M. S. Crossley et al. Nature Ecology & Evolution https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1269-4 (2020).

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Fig. 1: The complex history of sampling of the KNZ grasshopper dataset.

Data availability

KNZ grasshopper abundance data are available from the Long-Term Ecological Research Data Portal (https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/7b2259dcb0e499447e0e11dfb562dc2f). Citations for the additionally described LTER datasets are provided in the Supplementary Information.

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Acknowledgements

S. LaDeau, S. Earl, S. Barrott, E. Borer and S. Pennings aided in identifying errors in Crossley et al.’s online data. K. Roeder provided comments on an early draft of this manuscript. J. Taylor aided in identifying changes in Konza watershed names. We thank all LTER information managers and principal investigators who help keep online metadata updated. We thank P. Montz, J. Haarstad, A. Kuhl, M. Ayres, R. Holmes and the numerous others who did the hard work to generate these long-term datasets. NSF DEB-1556280 to M.K. and Konza Prairie LTER NSF DEB-1440484 supported this work.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, Gelnhausen, Germany

    Ellen A. R. Welti

  2. Division of Biology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

    Anthony Joern

  3. Harvard Forest, Harvard University, Petersham, MA, USA

    Aaron M. Ellison

  4. Museum of Southwestern Biology, Biology Department, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    David C. Lightfoot

  5. Department of Biology, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, USA

    Sydne Record

  6. Biological Sciences, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA

    Nicholas Rodenhouse

  7. Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Emily H. Stanley

  8. Geographical Ecology Group, Department of Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

    Michael Kaspari

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  1. Ellen A. R. Welti
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Contributions

E.A.R.W., S.R., A.J. and M.K. conceived the idea for the paper. E.A.R.W. wrote the first draft. A.M.E., D.C.L., S.R., N.R. and E.H.S. identified further errors in the Crossley et al. online data. All authors significantly contributed to revisions.

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Correspondence to Ellen A. R. Welti.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Nick Isaac, Manu Saunders and James Bell for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Discussion, Fig. 1 and list of data errors in Crossley et al. 2020.

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Welti, E.A.R., Joern, A., Ellison, A.M. et al. Studies of insect temporal trends must account for the complex sampling histories inherent to many long-term monitoring efforts. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 589–591 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01424-0

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