Overview

This introductory chapter outlines the parameters of an ecosystem approach to insect ecology. In addition to insect responses to environmental changes, as emphasized in traditional insect ecology texts, insects are capable of engineering ecosystem conditions, often in ways that contribute to ecosystem stability. The ecosystem approach is most easily illustrated through a hierarchical approach that highlights effects and feedbacks between individual and population, between population and community, and between community and ecosystem levels of the hierarchy. An important emergent aspect of this hierarchy is the regulation of population, community, and ecosystem structure and processes through positive and negative feedbacks from higher levels that minimize fluctuations at lower levels in the face of environmental changes, including disturbances.