Modelización de la dinámica temporal de poblaciones de insectos

Abstract

Insects perform essential functions for human life such as pollination, energy transmission or biological control. Recent publications suggest a decrease in insect abundance in certain parts of the world. This research aims to determine the behavior of insect abundance in a tropical environment by 1) univariate ARIMA modeling of the time series and 2) specification of generalized linear models to find the environmental and seasonal variables that influence each of the time series studied. Field work was carried out on the island of Barro Colorado in Panama, based on the hypothesis that insect abundance changes over time, and is related to environmental temperature. The analyses found that the abundance of each insect group shows a different trend, with Isoptera LT II going up, Hymenoptera going down and Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Lepidoptera, Formicidae LT, Isoptera LT I, Isoptera and Formicidae remaining the same over time. The change in abundance is associated with the seasonal effect present in six of the seven possible series. In addition, climatic factors were found to influence insect abundance, but mainly temperature. This study suggests that the abundance of insects in tropical areas, and all the essential functions they provide to humans, could change in the future if there is climate change.