The little things that run the world revisited: Invertebrates, ecosystem services and climate change

The sustainability of ecosystem services depends on a firm understanding of both how organisms provide these services to humans and how these organisms will be altered with a changing climate.  Unquestionably a dominant feature of most ecosystems, invertebrates affect many ecosystem services and are also highly responsive to climate change.  However, there is still a basic lack of understanding of the direct and indirect paths by which invertebrates influence ecosystem services, as well as how climate change will affect those ecosystem services by altering invertebrate populations.  This indicates a lack of communication and collaboration among scientists researching ecosystem services and climate change effects on invertebrates, and land managers and researchers from other disciplines, which becomes obvious when systematically reviewing the literature relevant to invertebrates, ecosystem services, and climate change. After an extensive literature search, we demonstrate that significant knowledge gaps exist in understanding how invertebrate effects on humans may be altered by climate change.  Accordingly, we summarized how invertebrates, the dominant taxa in most ecosystems, affect almost all categories of ecosystem services and are also highly sensitive to climate change. We therefore argue that conservation efforts to mitigate effects of climate change on ecosystem services must include consideration of invertebrate populations.   In particular, we suggest that interdisciplinary groups be used to collect necessary information to make informed decisions about when and how conservation efforts to manage for ecosystem services mediated by invertebrates should be accomplished.