Successes and Challenges in Social Insect Conservation

This Special Issue welcomes reviews and research articles highlighting recent advances in social insect conservation, be it at the molecular, organismal, or ecosystem level.

Submissions open: 1 March 2023
Submissions close: 1 August 2023

Background
Social insects including bees, ants, wasps, termites, and others, provide an invaluable suite of ecosystem services through pollination, pest control, and nutrient recycling. Some species of social insects, including honey bees and bumble bees, have become cornerstones of modern agriculture through their pollination services of critical components of the world’s food supply, and many also have cultural significance around the world as human food sources or for use in honey production.

Loss or diminution of social insects in the environment can lead to cascading effects on other organisms and ecosystems, as they play key roles in contributing to and maintaining biodiversity. Regrettably, populations of many social insects are in crisis, as habitat loss and fragmentation from urbanization and intensive agriculture, exposure to pesticides and other environmental toxins, environmental stochasticity due to climate change, and the spread of diseases and parasites impact their numbers.

This Special Issue serves as both a call to action to address the need for social insect conservation worldwide in an era of accelerated habitat loss and global climate change, and also to celebrate the efforts and successes of conservation scientists in their search for sustainable solutions to declining populations of social insects.

Aims and Scope of the Special Issue
The focus of this Special Issue is on concerns and advances related to the conservation of social insects. Submitted research and review papers may deal with any area directly related to this topic, including but not limited to:

・Newly threatened or endangered species, including their natural history and ecology;
・Ecosystem-level analyses of species interactions;
・Monitoring and assessment of changes in populations and/or communities over time;
・The genetic diversity and structure of social insect populations;
・Inter-specific disease and/or parasite transfer;
・Landscape rehabilitation for habitat restoration;
・Development of practical solutions to conservation problems, including breeding programs, pesticide toxicity testing, and pathogen identification.

Important Submission Information
To submit a manuscript for this Special Issue, authors should follow the steps below:

1. Authors submit their papers through the following website https://www.editorialmanager.com/inso/default2.aspx

2. Under “Additional Information”, authors must select “Yes” to their manuscript being submitted to a Thematic Series, then choose “SI: Successes and Challenges in Social Insect Conservation”

Contact
If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact Guest Editor Parry Kietzman (parry@vt.edu) or Editor-in-Chief Madeleine Beekman (madeleine.beekman@sydney.edu.au)