More than 100 long-term studies of insect populations have been neglected in current conversations surrounding #insectdecline. Yes, you read that right - more than a HUNDRED studies. What does this mean for our understanding of #insectdeclines? https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6489/417/tab-e-letters

Current conversations about #insectdecline tend to center on a handful of studies. The new meta-analysis by @PunksInScience did a lot to change this by analysing more studies, searching in two languages, and acknowledging limitations of their dataset.

But, as a community, we are still missing studies because of the way we use existing literature and how we search for it. We need to conduct syntheses more systematically than has been done in the past.

Synthesizing global biodiversity literature is challenging because studies are scattered across disciplines, published in many languages, and often remain unpublished. Studies with small effect sizes often go unpublished or are published in languages other than English.

Most meta-analyses and syntheses of global biodiversity only include articles published in English, which exacerbates geographic biases in the dataset. A synthesis can't truly be global if it is not based on a multi-lingual dataset.

How do we solve this problem? By working together as a community! #EntoGEM is an open, community-driven project to systematically identify and map studies and datasets documenting insect population trends.

Despite only being 2.6% through initial search results, EntoGEM has identified 111 10+-year datasets not referenced in any papers, commentaries, and syntheses on #insectdecline in the past two years. We would love to have you join this community effort! https://entogem.github.io/