About 70 per cent of the species on Earth are insects. They are fundamental components of most ecosystems: they comprise half of the biomass on the planet, pollinate flowers, decompose dead organic matter and play multiple roles in food webs. They are quite literally everywhere, including in and around our homes, but they have also been declining at alarming rates in many places.

The societal implications of this potential “insectageddon” could be catastrophic, including losses in human food production. However, confirming suspicions of global declines is difficult because we lack reliable data on insect populations in many parts of the world.

We simply don’t have the infrastructure around the planet that would allow us to track insect populations altogether. That means we don’t know how insect populations are responding to different global changes, and we might be failing to design effective conservation policies and track whether current actions are working.

Efforts to rapidly generate global indicators of insect population trends are therefore crucial. In our recently published paper, colleagues and I explain how a global butterfly index could help track butterfly populations worldwide — and how we can reach this important objective.

Butterflies: The poster child of insects

One reason why insects have been neglected in conservation is that they are often ignored — if not feared — by many people. Many of us have been brought up to be cautious around insects, whether they’re bees, spiders or other critters.

There is, on the other hand, broad interest in vertebrate species. Bird-watching has........

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