Flagship Insect Species in Australia’s Grasslands

Abstract

Grassland insect diversity is a key concern, but its conservation is aided greatly by efforts for individual selected species, whose well-being can garner widespread interest, focus wider concern (including that from groups of citizen scientists), and demonstrate the intricacies of the biology of those species. The focal species, usually those selected for priority treatment by being signalled in some way as ‘threatened’, are a major avenue toward communicating the importance and vulnerability of grassland insects, and their wider interactions. Almost by definition, these ‘flagship species’ are ecological specialists with particular limited resource needs, occurring in small and few populations, restricted in distribution, and showing signs of historical and/or current declines from a variety of threats. Some are the focus of continuing conservation campaigns, many necessarily dealing primarily with conservation of the species’ particular habitat and its wider enveloping grassland. Many studies, at least initially, may be driven by fates of individual sites, such as by remnant grasslands threatened with development, and in which optimal management measures may be highly individualistic to accommodate site features. Many conservation measures for rare insects on grasslands must necessarily focus on the single or few sites in which the focal species occurs.