Ethical issues in lethal insect monitoring

Abstract

Animal monitoring involves acquiring information about animals or their activities. Changes in available monitoring technologies, global biodiversity, and sociocultural norms have raised novel ethical challenges for biologists engaged in animal monitoring, including efforts aimed at monitoring insects. A growing amount of attention has been paid to the ethical challenges associated with lethal insect monitoring to include unclear environmental risks, welfare harms to insects, concerns about taking life, and more. Accordingly, we survey the literature raising questions about best practices in lethal monitoring, which, while largely focused on pollinators, applies more broadly to any insect monitoring initiatives. We consider whether monitoring is always required, whether monitoring must always be lethal, and whether lethal monitoring needs to kill as many individuals as standard methods do. We end by advocating for additional ethical dialogue that can assist practitioners in negotiating the variety of moral values that bear on these issues.