Social insects as bioindicators of environmental health in urban landscapes

AbstractSocial insects such as ants, bees, termites, wasps are excellent for monitoring how ecosystems evolve in metropolitan areas as being so sensitive to factors that stress them out, like pollution, habitat loss, temperature change, and chemical exposure. These fast and simple responses to environmental changes reveal a great deal about the lifespan and general condition of ecosystems. This work investigates the use of social insects as bioindicators using case studies and real-world data. While bees highlight how contaminated the air is and how the range of flowers is changing, ants demonstrate how wonderful the land is and how much area is being lost. Wasps enable us to monitor changing insect populations and the urban heat island effect; termites reveal a much about the state of the planet and how things breakdown. These examples highlight the close relationship among the diversity of social insects, the changes in population over time, and external stimuli. Including surveillance of social insects in their designs and environmental legislation helps cities better regulate the surroundings and promote sustainable development.