Since it became evident that the past few decades have seen such a drastic decline in the number and types of insects, researchers and conservationists have been actively looking for a solution. Radboud University PhD student Constant Swinkels: “There’s a lot going on and it’s all being closely monitored. We’re seeing many positive results, but there’s also a great deal of variation. In some places, the insects are doing much better, while in others there hasn’t been much change. On occasion, large sums of money have been spent on things that haven’t worked, which means that more research is needed.”
Cumbersome
Swinkels has been examining the interactions between insects and plants. “Even if you do have a lot of flowers and a lot of insects, the whole process is futile if they don’t interact with each other. This basically means that none of the insect species will survive and the plants will fail to reproduce.” So, how can this be investigated? Swinkels admits that studying these interaction can be quite cumbersome, as it requires the collection and DNA analysis of pollen carried by insects to determine which plants the insects have visited and how much pollen they have gathered. “It seems that an x number of plants are visited by a lot of bees. And that there are also an x number of insects that visit a lot of plants. Even so, there are rare insect species that depend on one particular type of plant, but fortunately this plant is often not only dependent on that one insect species. And this means that even if this one insect species were to have a particularly tough year, the plant would still survive. What we’re currently looking for are plants that we definitely need to include in our ecosystem because of their ability to facilitate so many different insect species, both rare and common.”
Highways for insect traffic
Although it may sound simple, an ecosystem is always a context-dependent system and this means that Swinkels, who is conducting research on flower-covered dykes, is also looking at differences in the environment (whether a busy road runs along the dyke, whether there is an agricultural district nearby, etc.), the effects of flooding, and seasonal or yearly differences. “Dykes are a fantastic study object. The great thing is that highly diverse plant growth on dykes not only seems to be better for the insects, but also are beneficial for the dyke’s root penetration and, ultimately, for its strength. The dykes also form long, continuous lines in the Dutch landscape. This means that they can act as highways for insect traffic.”
Gradually moving in the right direction
Swinkels agrees that he has an amazing job: “I get to work outdoors a lot, most often when the weather is nice because that’s when the insects come out. I do most of my reading and writing in autumn and winter.” Swinkels has also received quite a positive reaction to his research. “Of course, it can be difficult at times, either because what we’re aiming for is not necessarily the cheapest solution or simply because we want to completely change the way that things are currently being done. But there are also avid dyke superintendents who have seen just how appreciative walkers and cyclists are of the fact that the dykes’ vegetation is now flourishing just that little bit more. Nature research can be pretty demotivating when you see that something’s going wrong and it seems that nothing can be done about it. But in this case, you’ll find that together we’re gradually moving in the right direction.”
Constant Swinkels will be one of the speakers at the InScience Film Festival in Nijmegen. He will be taking part in the InScience Talk ‘Klein maar fijn’ [Small yet Lovely], which will take place on Saturday, 14 November. Click here to view the entire programme: https://www.insciencefestival.nl/nl/programma-info/
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