Recent developments and future perspectives in entomology: ecology

Abstract

This review article summarized the trends of ecological researches made during the last 20 years in the Entomological Society of Japan and provided the perspectives for this field in near future. In Entomological Science, the main journal of this society, the proportion of ecological papers increased from 25％ in 1990 to 64％ in 2016–2017. Of the ecological papers, the proportions of papers dealing with “bionomics of insects” and “social insects” decreased with time, whereas the proportions of papers dealing with “insect behaviors” and “species diversity” increased. The proportion of papers related to “exotic insects and insect conservation” has still been kept low although much attention has been focused on this field. I pointed out four subjects as promising targets for future studies.