Insect traits workshop at ESA Portland - please share

[Lichtenberg, Elinor]

Hi all,

Here’s another free workshop at Entomology 2025. We are aiming for participation by researchers and practitioners who study a range of insects and use (or want to use) insect trait data in various ways. Please share with anyone who may be interested. It is fortunately at a different time than the bee taxonomy workshop.

Working on insect traits? Want to work on insect traits but running into challenges? Please join our workshop at the Entomological Society of America meeting led by the Trait Working group of the RCN Status of Insects to discuss these topics and potentially join a distributed network of standardized data collection to allow for tests of insect trait variation and address many ecological questions! Ongoing participants will be invited to co-author a white paper and eventual data paper. Early career researchers are especially encouraged to attend!

Session: Standardizing the Collection of Insect Trait Data to Identify Ecological Functions
Session Date: Sunday November 9, 2025
Session Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Location: A106, OCC, Oregon Convention Center

Working group contacts:

Kayla Perry: perry...@osu.edu

Ellen Welti: elw...@ksu.edu

 

Session Abstract

Trait-based ecology offers mechanistic insights for understanding shifts in individuals, populations, and communities. Functional identity, rather than species diversity, often provides more insight into ecosystem function, emphasizing the need for comprehensive trait databases. In comparison to plants and most vertebrates, documentation of invertebrate traits is inconsistent in collection and lacking compilation.

Following the highly successful model of the plant trait database TRY, we propose taking the first steps toward identifying key insect traits that can be collected in a standardized way across the breadth of diversity that exists among Insecta orders, for the benefit of answering big and small questions in entomological research.

The workshop will commence with short presentations given by global groups, all of which are working to organize and collate insect trait data. Workshop participants will be asked to fillout a survey on their understanding  and background related to the topic of insect traits. This will be followed by discussion groups working to determine which insect traits, within different taxonomic/realm groups, can be collected with simple methods. Targeted traits will be used as identifiers or proxies for ecological roles and functions such as trophic guilds, dispersal capacities, energy/nutrient fluxes, population change capacities, and diet generalism/specialism. Discussion groups focused on these functional traits will be organized by taxonomic/realm grouping levels at which insect traits are often currently collated. Groups will be co-led by an established and early career researcher (primarily graduate students). Leaders who will each invite early career co-leaders include Kayla Perry (Coleoptera), Ellen Welti (Orthoptera), Deshae Dillard (Diptera), Karl Roeder (Formicidae), Nathan Baker (freshwater taxa), Elinor Lichtenberg (Apoidea), Vaughn Shirey (Lepidoptera), and Jessica Kansman (Hemiptera). Breakout group will discuss historical context of previous attempts to collate traits for their group, with discussions focusing on identifying which traits within the group most balance practicality of collection and identification of function.

Notes from all discussion groups will be used to write a white paper calling for the collection of function-focused insect trait data and contain a protocol, both divided by taxonomic group and seeking synthesis in approaches, for new insect trait collection. All workshop attendees will be invited to co-authorship. The protocol will be written in simple language, allowing for wider use by diverse audiences including classroom settings, graduate student projects, and taxonomists. The protocol will then be distributed across entomological networks with the aims of standardizing insect trait data collection, writing a data paper with open authorship for data providers, and creating the potential for multiple research papers focused on variation in both intra- and interspecific insect traits.

 
--
Elinor Lichtenberg
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Biological Sciences
University of North Texas

elic...@unt.edu
(940) 891-6956