Publication Alert: Ethical issues in lethal insect monitoring
Malaise trap for insect sampling (photo: Meghan Barrett)
Ethical issues in lethal insect monitoring (Barrett and Fischer, 2024; Current Opinion in Insect Science)
Acknowledgement of Funding and Conflicts of Interest: No funding was provided to write this article. The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Barrett and Fischer serve on the board of the academic society: Insect Welfare Research Society (unpaid); Barrett also serves on the publications committee of the academic society: Royal Entomological Society (unpaid).
Entomologists monitor insects to document or assess changes in biodiversity, monitor range shifts, track pathogens, manage pests/invasive species, make educated conservation decisions, and much more. These monitoring efforts can be non-lethal, but often they require the lethal collection of at least some insects.
When monitoring is lethal, it can raise a host of interesting ethical questions. For instance:
“When is monitoring data worth risking possible negative consequences for populations or species? Are there moral reasons not to kill individual insects? Is lethal monitoring ever in tension with entomological professionalism?”
In this review paper, we consider the recent literature on the ethical challenges that may arise when lethally sampling insects. We begin by considering the range of human values that bear on, and thus the possible moral problems that can arise in, the lethal sampling of insects. We discuss how lethal sampling may harm biodiversity, particularly if it is overzealous - thus, lethal sampling contains some level of environmental risk. Second, lethal sampling may impose some costs wherein it is not sensitive to avoiding unnecessary harms (either to the welfare of the animals, or in the taking of life more broadly). Third, there can be tensions between a professional identity focused on conserving insects - and one that requires killing them. Entomologists may differ in how much they value each of the aforementioned concerns, as well as the knowledge produced via a lethal sampling initiative, and in how they would trade-off between them.
However, in many cases these problems depend on whether the lethal sampling that is taking place is unavoidable. In our review of the literature, we suggest that lethal monitoring may not be as necessary as it currently is prevalent (even just through reductions in bycatch) - and that we could be better stewards of the resources obtained through lethal monitoring. With that in mind, we then turn to the conversation about best practices regarding lethal sampling, when it does occur.
We hope this review gives readers insights on the current conversation re: ethical issues in lethal insect monitoring and shares a diverse set of resources and perspectives in the annotated reference list.
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