Alpine Entomology Marks Five Years as an Open Window on Mountain Insects Worldwide

Alpine Entomology, the open-access journal published by the Swiss Entomological Society, is celebrating its fifth anniversary with its current issue. From the outset, the society made clear that the journal would not confine itself to insects of the Alps. Instead, Alpine Entomology is intended to be perceived as an international journal for mountain entomology worldwide, publishing research on arthropods from the Alpine region and from mountainous regions across the globe.

Defining what counts as a mountain is less straightforward than it might seem. The journal’s editors note that these rugged structures in the landscape are not easy to delineate, and that mountains can be defined in different ways. For this reason, when evaluating each submitted manuscript, the journal also considers the landscape and taxonomic context of the study. The journal’s scope is not restricted to insects: articles focusing on other mountain arthropods are equally welcome.

The anniversary comes at a moment of broad concern about insect populations. Insects, like many other species groups, are affected by the biodiversity crisis driven by land use and climate change, over- or under-use of resources, pollution, and invasive alien species. After the well-known Krefeld study, which highlighted a loss of 75 percent of insect biomass over 27 years in protected areas in Germany, further scientific articles and reviews have followed on the same theme. It is now widely recognized that the diversity and biomass of insects are strongly threatened globally.

At the same time, the picture is not uniformly bleak. Not all insect populations are decreasing. Some thermophilous species can benefit from climate change and expand both their population size and their distribution. There are also examples of insect populations increasing as a result of successful conservation measures. These contrasting trajectories underline why continued monitoring and research on insect trends, including in mountain regions, remains important.

A recent comprehensive study published in a Swiss Academic Report concluded that conservation measures are urgently needed to avoid dramatic losses of insects and the valuable ecosystem services they provide. According to that report, such measures are necessary across all activity sectors, including agriculture, forestry, and energy production. Among other recommendations, the report calls for an intensification of species monitoring and research activities in entomology, and for an improvement in knowledge transfer.

The editors of Alpine Entomology see the journal as contributing directly to these goals. As an open-access outlet, the journal publishes research and review articles, short communications, and checklists on arthropods, not only from the Alps but also from other mountainous regions. In doing so, it aims to disseminate knowledge about insects to a broad audience.

To strengthen the journal’s international impact and scientific quality, the society has recently formed an editorial board. The board currently comprises Editor in Chief Prof. Dr. Thibault Lachat of Bern University of Applied Sciences; Dr. Oliver Martin, President of the Swiss Entomological Society, of ETH Zurich; Dr. Yves Basset of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama; Prof. Dr. Inon Scharf of Tel Aviv University; PD Dr. Seraina Klopfstein of the Natural History Museum, Basel; and Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev, Managing Director and Founder of Pensoft Publishers. Board members are expected to act as ambassadors for the journal outside Switzerland and to support its strategic decisions. The board is open to expansion, and the editors especially hope to recruit international researchers working in regions not currently represented.

A few weeks before the anniversary issue, the journal launched its first topical collection, a step intended to increase the journal’s attractiveness. The collection focuses on arthropods associated with aquatic ecosystems in mountainous regions. The editors point out that aquatic ecosystems, and especially running waters, represent some of the most impacted environments on the planet, that aquatic invertebrates are key indicators of global or local changes, and that many aquatic ecosystems are closely linked to mountains because they originate in them.

Through this open collection, Alpine Entomology offers authors the opportunity to submit manuscripts based on already available data with clear evidence for changes or trends in aquatic arthropods, even where sampling designs were not initially conceived for that goal. The editors say such studies would be highly relevant to improving understanding of developments concerning arthropod populations and knowledge of aquatic species. The collection provides a platform for research articles or short notes on trends and changes in biogeography, species communities or distribution, as well as behavior or morphology of aquatic arthropods from mountainous regions. Jean-Luc Gattolliat and Dávid Murányi serve as editors of the collection; they will invite authors to submit manuscripts and will offer a fee waiver for invited contributions, while the collection remains open to relevant additional submissions.

After five years, the journal has already surmounted several challenges. Since 2019 it has been indexed in Emerging Sources Citation by Clarivate Analytics, and since 2020 it has also been indexed by Scopus. One stated goal for the coming years is to obtain an impact factor from Clarivate, which the editors describe as a clear signal that the journal is well established and recognized in the scientific community. To reach that goal, the journal aims to recruit and secure a consistent flow of manuscripts targeting roughly 20 to 25 published papers per year, while maintaining the quality of published articles. The editors note that this depends on the continued support of expert subject editors and numerous reviewers, whom they thank for their essential contributions since the journal’s creation. Over the next months, further topical collections are planned, with the editorial board involved in evaluating suggestions for future topics and recruiting new topics in a targeted fashion.

Subject of Research: The fifth anniversary, scope, editorial structure and future plans of the open-access journal Alpine Entomology

Article Title: Five years of Alpine Entomology, the international journal on mountain insects

Article References: Lachat, T., & Martin, O. Y. (2021). Five years of Alpine Entomology, the international journal on mountain insects. Alpine Entomology, 5, 123-124. https://doi.org/10.3897/alpento.5.78033

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/alpento.5.78033

Keywords: Alpine Entomology, mountain entomology, arthropods, biodiversity crisis, insect decline, open access, topical collection, aquatic ecosystems, Swiss Entomological Society, Scopus, editorial board, insect conservation