“Parachute science” is failing the tropics, home to more than 80% of insect species

Scientists want to rescue the world’s overlooked tropical insects by tapping a surprisingly rich mix of local knowledge, museum records, citizen science, and even social media.

Scientists at Monash University have proposed a new global strategy to address a major weakness in biodiversity conservation. Insects are essential to ecosystems, agriculture, and food production, yet conservation efforts across tropical regions often fail to account for them.

The international research was led by Dr. Shawan Chowdhury, head of the Global Change Ecology Lab at Monash University's School of Biological Sciences. Published in BioScience, the study brought together experts in tropical ecology from around the world to identify the main barriers to protecting insects and outline practical ways to overcome them.

Most of Earth's Insects Live in the Tropics

Insects are the most diverse group of animals on the planet. Scientists estimate there may be between 14 and 30 million insect species, and most have not yet been formally documented.

Their ecological importance is enormous. Insects pollinate more than 80 percent of wild plant species, serve as food for 60 percent of bird species, and support food webs, nutrient cycling, and global food production.

Despite growing evidence that insect populations are declining, much of the scientific knowledge used for conservation comes from temperate regions. Those regions account for only about 20 percent of the world's insect diversity.

Dr. Chowdhury said this imbalance creates a serious risk that conservation programs will miss the places where most insect species actually live.

"More than 80 percent of insect species occur in the tropics, yet these are the very places where we have some of the biggest gaps in our knowledge," Dr. Chowdhury said.

"We cannot effectively conserve species if we don't know what is there, where populations are changing, or even where important existing knowledge can be found.

"Insects are fundamental to functioning ecosystems and food production, but they remain dramatically underrepresented in biodiversity monitoring, protected areas and conservation policy."

Four Major Barriers to Insect Conservation

The research team identified four major problems limiting tropical insect conservation: poor global visibility of existing research, severe data gaps, inadequate scientific infrastructure, and too little conservation action.

To address those weaknesses, the framework recommends drawing on a much broader range of information. That includes conventional scientific studies as well as regional and non-English publications, museum collections, local knowledge, citizen science, observations shared on social media, and emerging technologies.

The researchers also stress the need to strengthen local scientific capacity and make sure that useful evidence reaches policymakers who can turn it into conservation decisions.

The imbalance in existing records is dramatic. Nearly 26 percent of insect distribution data in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility comes from the United Kingdom alone, even though the majority of the world's insect diversity occurs in tropical regions.

"Some of the information we desperately need already exists but it may be in a local journal, held by a regional expert, sitting in a collection, or even contained in photographs shared online," Dr. Chowdhury said.

"The answer isn't simply to collect more data. We need to become much better at finding, connecting and using the knowledge that already exists, while building the local expertise and infrastructure needed for long-term monitoring."

Bangladesh Reveals Both the Problem and the Opportunity

The researchers used Bangladesh to demonstrate how their framework could work in practice. Bangladesh is one of the world's most densely populated tropical countries, making it a useful example of both the difficulties facing insect conservation and the opportunities for improving it.

The team found 111 relevant studies involving butterflies in Bangladesh. Only 34 had been published in international journals.

Nearly two-thirds of the studies focused on where different butterfly species were found, while just three dealt specifically with conservation.

Social media emerged as an unexpectedly rich source of biodiversity information. Earlier research found that Facebook contained records for 167 of 169 threatened butterfly species in Bangladesh.

The finding suggests that unconventional sources can help fill major information gaps, especially in countries where formal biodiversity databases are still limited.

Bangladesh also illustrates how urgently better information needs to be converted into conservation action. Of 226 butterfly species evaluated in previous research, only one was adequately represented within the country's existing system of protected areas.

"Bangladesh shows that a lack of conventional data does not mean we have to accept a lack of conservation action," Dr. Chowdhury said.

"By bringing together local knowledge, citizen science, social media, scientific monitoring and regional expertise, we can build a much clearer picture of where species occur and where conservation effort is most urgently needed."

Moving Beyond "Parachute Science"

The researchers also argue that international conservation research needs to move away from "parachute science," a model in which scientists and communities in tropical countries are treated mainly as sources of data rather than equal partners.

Instead, the proposed framework emphasizes research led locally, greater investment in regional collections and scientific infrastructure, stronger taxonomic expertise, long-term monitoring, fairer international partnerships, and closer connections between scientists and decision-makers.

"If we want global biodiversity targets to mean something, tropical insects cannot remain an afterthought," Dr. Chowdhury said.

"This is about moving from documenting the problem to creating a system that can deliver measurable conservation outcomes — with local scientists and communities at the center of that work.

"The tropics hold most of the world's insect diversity. Protecting that extraordinary diversity is not just an insect conservation issue — it is fundamental to ecosystems, food security and human well-being."

The study, "A framework for the strategic conservation of tropical insects," includes researchers from Australia, Bangladesh, Uganda, Hong Kong, Brazil, Czech Republic, Italy and India.