Recent reports of dramatic declines in insect abundance suggest grave consequences for global ecosystems and human society. Most evidence comes from Europe, however, leaving uncertainty about insect population trends worldwide. We used >5,300 time series for insects and other arthropods, collected over 4–36 years at monitoring sites representing 68 different natural and managed areas, to search for evidence of declines across the United States. Some taxa and sites showed decreases in abundance and diversity while others increased or were unchanged, yielding net abundance and biodiversity trends generally indistinguishable from zero. This lack of overall increase or decline was consistent across arthropod feeding groups and was similar for heavily disturbed versus relatively natural sites. The apparent robustness of US arthropod populations is reassuring. Yet, this result does not diminish the need for continued monitoring and could mask subtler changes in species composition that nonetheless endanger insect-provided ecosystem services.

最近有关昆虫丰度急剧下降的报道表明，这对全球生态系统和人类社会造成了严重后果。但是，大多数证据来自欧洲，因此全世界昆虫种群趋势尚不确定。我们使用了超过5300种昆虫和其他节肢动物的时间序列，在代表68个不同自然和管理区的监测站点中进行了4至36年的收集，以寻找整个美国下降的证据。一些分类单元和地点显示出丰度和多样性下降，而另一些则增加或保持不变，从而产生净丰度和生物多样性趋势通常与零没有区别。在节肢动物摄食组中，总体上缺乏这种增加或减少的现象是一致的，对于严重干扰的地区和相对自然的地区也是如此。美国节肢动物种群的明显健壮性令人放心。然而，这一结果并没有减少对持续监测的需求，并且可能掩盖物种构成的微妙变化，但这仍然危及昆虫提供的生态系统服务。