Please provide a short (approximately 100 word) summary of the following web Content, written in the voice of the original author. If there is anything controversial please highlight the controversy. If there is something surprising, unique, or clever, please highlight that as well. Content: Title: More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass (2017) Site: journals.plos.org Abstract Global declines in insects have sparked wide interest among scientists, politicians, and the general public. Loss of insect diversity and abundance is expected to provoke cascading effects on food webs and to jeopardize ecosystem services. Our understanding of the extent and underlying causes of this decline is based on the abundance of single species or taxonomic groups only, rather than changes in insect biomass which is more relevant for ecological functioning. Here, we used a standardized protocol to measure total insect biomass using Malaise traps, deployed over 27 years in 63 nature protection areas in Germany (96 unique location-year combinations) to infer on the status and trend of local entomofauna. Our analysis estimates a seasonal decline of 76%, and mid-summer decline of 82% in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study. We show that this decline is apparent regardless of habitat type, while changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics cannot explain this overall decline. This yet unrecognized loss of insect biomass must be taken into account in evaluating declines in abundance of species depending on insects as a food source, and ecosystem functioning in the European landscape. Citation: Hallmann CA, Sorg M, Jongejans E, Siepel H, Hofland N, Schwan H, et al. (2017) More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas. PLoS ONE 12(10): e0185809. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185809 Editor: Eric Gordon Lamb, University of Saskatchewan, CANADA Received: July 28, 2017; Accepted: September 19, 2017; Published: October 18, 2017 Copyright: © 2017 Hallmann et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: CH and EJ were supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO grants 840.11.001 and 841.11.007), and NH by the Triodos Foundation. The investigations of the Entomological Society Krefeld and its members are spread over numerous individual projects at different locations and in different years. Grants and permits that have made this work possible are listed below: Bezirksregierungen Düsseldorf & Köln, BfN - Bundesamt für Naturschutz, Land Nordrhein-Westfalen - Europäische Gemeinschaft ELER, Landesamt für Agrarordnung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Landesamt für Natur, Umwelt und Verbraucherschutz Nordrhein-Westfalen, Landesamt für Umwelt Brandenburg, Landesamt für Umwelt Rheinland-Pfalz, LVR - Landschaftsverband Rheinland, Naturschutzbund Deutschland, Nordrhein-Westfalen Stiftung, RBN Bergischer Naturschutzverein, RVR - Regionalverband Ruhr, SGD Nord Rheinland-Pfalz, Universitäten Bonn, Duisburg-Essen & Köln, Untere Landschaftsbehörden: Kreis Düren, Kreis Heinsberg, Kreis Kleve, Kreis Viersen, Kreis Wesel & AGLW, Stadt Düsseldorf, Stadt Köln, Stadt Krefeld, Rheinisch Bergischer Kreis, Rhein Kreis Neuss & Rhein-Sieg-Kreis. Members of the Entomological Society Krefeld and cooperating botanists and entomologists that were involved in the empirical investigations are greatly acknowledged: U.W. Abts, F. Bahr, A. Bäumler, D. & H. Beutler, P. Birnbrich, U. Bosch, J. Buchner, F. Cassese, K. Cölln, A.W. Ebmer, R. Eckelboom, B. Franzen, M. Grigo, J. Günneberg, J. Gusenleitner, K. Hamacher, F. Hartfeld, M. Hellenthal, J. Hembach, A. Hemmersbach, W. Hock, V. Huisman-Fiegen, J. Illmer, E. Jansen, U. Jäckel, F. Koch, M. Kreuels, P. Leideritz, I. Loksa, F. B. Ludescher, F. J. Mehring, G. Milbert, N. Mohr, P. Randazzo, K. Reissmann, S. Risch, B. Robert, J. de Rond, U. Sandmann, S. Scharf, P. Scherz, J. Schiffer, C. Schmidt, O. & W. Schmitz, B. P. & W. Schnell, J. L. Schönfeld, E. Schraetz, M. Schwarz, R. Seliger, H. W. Siebeneicher, F. & H. Sonnenburg W. J. S. & P. Sorg, A. Ssymank, H. Sticht, M. Weithmann, W. Wichard and H. Wolf. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Introduction Loss of insects is certain to have adverse effects on ecosystem functioning, as insects play a central role in a variety of processes, including pollination [ 1 , 2 ], herbivory and detrivory [ 3 , 4 ], nutrient cycling [ 4 ] and providing a food source for higher trophic levels such as birds, mammals and amphibians. For example, 80% of wild plants are estimated to depend on insects for pollination [ 2 ], while 60% of birds rely on insects as a food source [ 5 ]. The ecosystem services provided by wild insects have been estimated at $57 billion annually in the USA [ 6 ]. Clearly, preserving insect abundance and diversity should constitute a prime conservation priority. Current data suggest an overall pattern of decline in insect diversity and abundance. For example, populations of European grassland butterflies are estimated to have declined by 50% in abundance between 1990 and 2011 [ 7 ]. Data for other well-studied taxa such as bees [ 8 – 14 ] and moths [ 15 – 18 ] suggest the same trend. Climate change, habitat loss and fragmentation, and deterioration of habitat quality have been proposed as some of the prime suspects responsible for the decline [ 9 – 11 , 13 , 18 – 22 ]. However, the number of studies on insect trends with sufficient replication and spatial coverage are limited [ 10 , 23 – 25 ] and restricted to certain well-studied taxa. Declines of individual species or taxa (e.g. [ 7 , 26 ]) may not reflect the general state of local entomofauna [ 27 ]. The total insect biomass would then be a better metric for the status of insects as a group and its contribution to ecosystem functioning, but very few studies have monitored insect biomass over an extensive period of time [ 28 ]. Hence, to what extent total insect biomass has declined, and the relative contribution of each proposed factor to the decline, remain unresolved yet highly relevant questions for ecosystem ecology and conservation. Here, we investigate total aerial insect biomass between 1989 and 2016 across 96 unique location-year combinations in Germany, representative of Western European low-altitude nature protection areas embedded in a human-dominated landscape ( S1 Fig ). In all years we sampled insects throughout the season (March through October), based on a standardized sampling scheme using Malaise traps. We investigated rate of decline in insect biomass, and examined how factors such as weather, habitat and land use variables influenced the declines. Knowledge on the state of insect biomass, and it’s direction over time, are of broad importance to ecology and conservation, but historical data on insect biomass have been lacking. Our study makes a first step into filling this gap, and provides information that is vital for the assessment of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem health in agricultural landscapes. Materials and methods Data Biomass data. Biomass data were collected and archived using a standardized protocol across 63 unique locations between 1989 and 2016 (resulting in 96 unique location-year combinations) by the Entomological Society Krefeld. The standardized protocol of collection has been originally designed with the idea of integrating quantitative aspects of insects in the status assessment of the protected areas, and to construct a long-term archive in order to preserve (identified and not-identified) specimens of local diversity for future studies. In the present study, we consider the total biomass of flying insects to assess the state of local entomofauna as a group. All trap locations were situated in protected areas, but with varying protection status: 37 locations are within Natura2000 sites, seven locations within designated Nature reserves, nine locations within Protected Landscape Areas (with funded conservation measures), six locations within Water Protection Zones, and four locations of protected habitat managed by Regional Associations. For all location permits have been obtained by the relevant authorities, as listed in the S1 Appendix . In our data, traps located in nutrient-poor heathlands, sandy grasslands, and dune habitats provide lower quantities of biomass as compared to nutrient nutrient-rich grasslands, margins and wastelands. As we were interested in whether the declines interact with local productivity, traps locations were pooled into 3 distinct habitat clusters, namely: nutrient-poor heathlands, sandy grassland, and dunes (habitat cluster 1, n = 19 locations, Fig 1A ), nutrient-rich grasslands, margins and wasteland (habitat cluster 2, n = 41 locations, Fig 1B ) and a third habitat cluster that included pioneer and shrub communities (n = 3 locations). Most locations (59%, n = 37) were sampled in only one year, 20 locations in two years, five locations in three years, and one in four years, yielding in total 96 unique location-year combinations of measurements of seasonal total flying insect biomass. Our data do not represent longitudinal records at single sites, suitable to derive location specific trends (e.g. [ 28 ]). Prolonged trapping across years is in the present context (protected areas) deemed undesirable, as the sampling process itself can negatively impact local insect stocks. However, the data do permit an analysis at a higher spatial level, i.e. by treating seasonal insect biomass profiles as random samples of the state of entomofauna in protected areas in western Germany. Malaise traps were deployed through the spring, summer and early autumn. They operated continuously (day and night), and catches were emptied at regular intervals, on average every 11.2 days (sd = 6.3). We collected in total 1503 trap samples, with an average of 16 (4–35) successive catches per location-year combination ( Table 1 ). Between 1989 and 2016, a total of 53.54kg of invertebrates have been collected and stored, over a total trap exposure period of 16908 days, within an average of 176 exposure days per location-year combination. Malaise traps are known to collect a much wider diversity of insect species (e.g. [ 29 – 31 ]) as compared to suction traps (e.g. [ 28 ]) and are therefore considered superior as a method of collecting flying insects. On the basis of partial assessments, we can assume that the total number of insects included in 53.54 kg biomass represents millions of individuals. Table 1. Overview of malaise-trap samples sizes. For each year, the number of locations sampled, the number of location re-sampled, total number of samples, as well as mean and standard deviation of exposure time at the trap locations (in days) are presented. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185809.t001 The sampling was standardized in terms of trap construction, size and desig