Invertebrates

This page was authored by Willow Neal in 2025.

Importance of invertebrates

Invertebrates are incredibly important to life. Some act as decomposers, breaking down dead plants and animals to recycle nutrients back into the soil. Many insects such as bees and butterflies pollinate flowering plants including most of our food crops. They are a crucial food source for many animals, helping to keep ecosystems stable. Many are also beautiful. Stunning arrays of colours, shapes, sizes and unusual morphology or modes of life make this one of the most diverse, unique and fascinating groups of animals, which makes up over half of all animal species.

However, human activities such as climate change, urbanisation, habitat destruction and fragmentation are threatening many of these species. Urban development reduces green spaces, introduces pollution and disrupts natural habitats, all of which contribute to declining invertebrate populations. Without invertebrates, ecosystems cannot function properly. It is therefore vital to monitor changes in their communities over time to understand the impact of environmental change. At the OpenLiving Labs, our aim is to collect and analyse data on invertebrates at the site to see how ongoing changes influence their communities, with the goal of fostering a richer and more diverse ecosystem.

Insects, in the scientific class Insecta, are a large group of invertebrates. They have a hard outer skeleton made of a material called chitin and a body divided into three parts: the head, thorax and abdomen. Most insects have three pairs of jointed legs, as well as antennae and compound eyes. These are typically the group we find on the site, but we also have collected many other invertebrates that are not insects including springtails (Collembola) and spiders (Arachnida).

BIOSCAN

Since 2023, the OpenLiving Labs has been supporting the Wellcome Sanger Institute on the BIOSCAN project, which aims to explore the genetic diversity of one million flying insects across the UK.

A detailed breakdown of some of the taxonomy of our most common orders of insects can be found here.

We sample from two areas on site using a malaise trap and prepare specimens that are sent to the Wellcome Sanger Institute for sequencing using DNA barcoding, which is a technique that identifies species by reading a unique stretch of their DNA. We also carry out some in-house identification, which helps to complement the sequencing work. You can see the species we have found by looking at our Report Card on the BIOSCAN website and searching “Open University” on the “Partner” filter. You can then filter these data further by Order, Family, Genus or Species.

How we collect the data

We make monthly samples from two distinct areas within the OpenLiving Labs: an area of riparian woodland and an area on the edge of a floodplain meadow. Riparian woodland is a type of wet woodland typically found alongside rivers and other watercourses. Floodplain meadows, by contrast, are unimproved grasslands that experience flooding and are also typically found by watercourses. While these two habitats may appear similar, they represent different stages of ecological succession: without management, floodplain meadows would gradually transition through scrub toward woodland, potentially developing into riparian woodland depending on local conditions. Therefore, these sites have unique biophysical characteristics, potentially resulting in unique communities of invertebrates.

A malaise trap is a widely used and effective method for sampling flying insects. Structurally, it resembles a tent, with fine mesh walls that act as a barrier. When insects encounter the mesh, their natural escape response is to fly upward. The trap exploits this behaviour, guiding them into a collecting head that funnels into a catch pot containing ethanol. The ethanol both immobilises and preserves the specimens, ensuring they remain intact for later identification and analysis. We collect our insect samples using malaise traps positioned within these two sites at Open Living Labs. These traps were strategically arranged to intercept insects flying toward the River Ouzel, which flows through the site.

Malaise traps are particularly effective for capturing a wide range of insects, especially Diptera (flies) and Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants and sawflies), which are otherwise difficult to sample comprehensively. By operating the traps consistently across sampling periods, we can compare changes in insect abundance and diversity between the riparian woodland and floodplain meadow habitats, and track seasonal variation across the year. When specimens are collected and the malaise trap emptied, they are identified as close to species level as possible.

What have we found?

You can find more detail about the insect orders we have found at the OpenLiving Labs here.