A multi-threat meta-analytic framework and database for understanding insect biodiversity change

Widespread declines in insects have been attributed to a diverse set of drivers, but the relative importance of these drivers remains unclear. A key reason why is that their effects depend on many factors, such as taxonomy, geography, sampling method, and biodiversity metric. To better understand the relative impact of different drivers on insect biodiversity, effect sizes need to be anchored to major sources of heterogeneity, and collected reproducibly through a structured protocol. This standardized approach will allow a quantitative synthesis of relative threats to insects, enabling more robust predictions of changes in insect biodiversity. Here I introduce a meta-analytic framework and database for understanding insect biodiversity change, structured to allow the continual addition of new effect sizes. A hope is that, as a community, we can use a framework such as this to build a global compilation of effect sizes for the impact of anthropogenic activity on insects. I set out how I think we might achieve this goal, and what it might mean if we did.